


Beloved One, Teach Me

by hobbitdragon



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Altered Mental States, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anal Fingering, Andrastianism, Background Mage Adaar/Dorian Pavus, Bottom Delrin, Canon-Typical Violence, Chant of Light, Character of Faith, Cultural Differences, Demons, Epistolary, Erection Problems, Frottage, Grief/Mourning, He gets better, Lyrium Withdrawal, M/M, Major Character Injury, Oral Sex, Prayer, Qunari Culture and Customs, Romance, Slow Burn, Tal-Vashoth Iron Bull, Templars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-20
Updated: 2017-11-20
Packaged: 2019-01-31 10:47:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 32,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12680340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hobbitdragon/pseuds/hobbitdragon
Summary: The Inquisitor chose the mages, but it was Cole and Delrin Barris together who arrived at Haven. Being one of a very small handful of uncorrupted Templars, especially while surrounded by rebel mages, would have been a lonely life. Good thing Delrin was a clever man and Iron Bull and the Chargers were there.A story about faith, love, and letters home.(Note: this fic does include epistolary sections, but most of it is 3rd-person narrative.)





	1. Make Me to Rest in the Warmest Places

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Dragonflies_and_Katydids](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dragonflies_and_Katydids/gifts).



> This fic ate my life for a month and a half. I honestly meant to just sit down and write some hot smut. I got this monster of a slow-burn fic about faith instead. I wrote myself into a new OTP as a result, though!
> 
> This fic could also be titled "Delrin Encounters Bull While In a Variety of Altered Mental States" because weirdly enough that wound up being a theme too even though I didn't intend that. 
> 
> This story includes versions of many scenes and themes from canon, but doesn't include every character interaction one can have with people as the Inquisitor. This is not because I dislike those scenes, but because this fic was getting so long and complicated that I had to get choosy about what I included. Sorry if I left out a favorite scene of yours!

A letter sent from the town closest to Therinfal Redoubt, addressed to the Barris estate near Lake Calenhad

_Dear Mother, Father, and Corram,_

_I wish I could be more optimistic in sending this, but I have left the Order. They have gone astray. I don’t dare tell you where I’m going in case the Order intercepts this somehow and forces me to return. Our actions have been watched by our commanding officers for months, and many of us were expecting letters which never arrived, so I fear being incautious. I have taken enough supplies to last me a week, but it will take longer than that to get where I am going, and there are a number of fade rifts between myself and my destination. The Order passed by some in the distance on our way to Therinfal - and ignored the pleas of the people begging us to stay and fight the demons for them. One Templar alone is not much of a fighting force, but I will do what I can as I travel. Hopefully I will not be mistaken for any of the other Templar defectors abroad in Fereldan these days, many of whom have gone mad and lost all sense of duty or compassion. My desertion is a matter of conscience, not of pride and malice. I leave so that I may continue to do my Maker-given duty._

_With the Maker’s blessing, I will survive, reach my destination, and write to you again. I believe that I have goodness on my side. An intuition told me I would die (or wish to die) if I remained with the Order, and I managed to find supplies beyond what I feared I’d be able to scrounge together in the dead of night, so I am choosing to think of it as a sign from the Maker. Perhaps He will protect me._

_If He does not and I join Him sooner rather than later, know that I love you all, and Eriada and little Ceridor. You chose well in sending me to the Order, and I have served with pride, knowing I have done good work in protecting both the common folk and the mages in my care. If leaving is my last gesture of protest against the choices the Order now makes, it is a fitting way to die, and I will meet the Maker with an easy heart._

_Father, thank you for your faith in both me and Andraste that made you choose to send me to do her work. Mother, I know you struggle with words, but that has mattered less than you fear. I know you love me. Do not let anything that is to come make you doubt Father’s choice. I know you disagreed, but it is what I wanted. Corram, despite your self-doubt, you are a good husband to Eriada, and will continue to be a good father to Ceridor. Kiss them for me, and if I am lost in the days to come, tell Ceridor I wished us to meet someday._

_Your loving son and brother,_

_Delrin Barris_

 

_**_

 

All had been white and cold for days, and Delrin fought the shaking of his limbs to continue up the deep-worn mountain road. In the glimmering moments when Delrin’s mind cleared and he was able to think, he wondered where the carts and other traffic were; did not the Inquisition need supplies? Did it not attract a stream of refugees and faithful as he had heard? He had hoped to beg a ride, or possibly other aid. So why had he seen no one since the town on the banks of Lake Calenhad?

For some minutes he tried in vain to remember the town’s name, tumbling sounds together in his mouth in an attempt to make any of them fit the memory of the warm inn and the hot stew that had filled his belly even though his sense of taste had gone.

The absence of lyrium left all else dull and colorless, without scent or flavor or meaning. The quaking of his legs worsened, and he thought again of shedding his armor. It was so heavy, and he was so weak. He felt every strap, every buckle, every chafing dent as though they dug directly into his brain. There had been nothing but pain for days, and the Maker had left him a long time ago. If he just had lyrium, Delrin knew his strength would return, and multiplied. He could run up this mountain then, and do it singing the Chant of Light. Perhaps then, the Maker and His Bride would return, and walk beside him to Haven. But Haven was where she rested, wasn’t it? Perhaps she waited for him there? He had to make it to Haven, he couldn’t lie down yet.

The memory of the sweet blue taste flooded his mouth. The way it sang in his veins and called him to his purpose....the world without it had flattened into a one-dimensional image of snow, and snow, and snow.

The trees turned around him, sliding left, and something caught his shoulder, pushing him back upright.

 _You are almost there,_ something thought for him. _Do not worry about the fight ahead. My knives are sharp, and soon you shall sleep, soothed._

“Fight?” Delrin mumbled, and his right hand groped at his hip for his sword. He couldn’t find it, and a moan of horror escaped him. There was a fight ahead of him, and he had no sword. Only the shield, pulling down his left arm till his shoulder felt ready to pop from its socket. He couldn’t fight, not anymore.

A fear-filled hour passed, and then the knowledge of what was ahead left his mind, and there was only snow, and snow, and snow. In his boots, down the back of his armor, finding spaces between his scarf and his skin. The wet and cold were everything in the world and he would never stop shaking.

The darkness around him opened out into big, and white, and walls. Something loud throbbed to his left, and he turned toward it. It caught his cheek, spinning him so he fell into the white. Something fast moved above him, and he pulled at his arm till his shield kept the world out. There was a face in the white, unfamiliar, and he didn’t want it. It struck at him, punching his shield down and away and slamming into his hip.

 _I brought him this far, you cannot have him now!_ something screamed, and the face was gone, and there was red everywhere.

Delrin pushed himself up onto his knees. There was a wall somewhere nearby, could he maybe get to that? He thought about it for a while as the world spun gently around him, until finally something pulled him upright. The noise was gone, except now there were bells calling to him, and when Delrin lifted his eyes, there were people.

One of the figures loomed huge above the others. He stood bare, and wore a crown of darkness, and the cold did not touch him even though all around them was white. Delrin’s eyes went round, for he knew who it must be.

“Maker,” he breathed, reverent, and sagged into the figure’s arms. They wrapped warm and soft around him, lifting him from the white earth.

Delrin turned his face into the Maker’s breast and waited to be brought to heaven.

 

**

 

From the notebooks of Varric Tethras

_At first we all thought the boy, Cole, had come alone from Therinfal. Haven’s open gates framed him like a painting by a particularly grim artist: he stood among a scattered ring of bodies, knives still dripping with blood from the last man he’d felled. Unusually for him, as I would later discover, Cole immediately drew the eye, tall and long-limbed and wearing an enormous wide-brimmed hat, with bright eyes that burned in the sunset light._

_But then we saw the other man with Cole--a Templar, obvious in his armor, kneeling in the snow nearby and shaking fit to break apart. His sword must have fallen somewhere, for he clutched at his shield alone and leaned upon it, forehead pressed to the metal. The purple-black bruising around his eyes spoke of weeks without sleep, and his armor was dented and bloodstained. He bled from a gash along his jaw, and another wound we couldn’t see beneath his armor seeped down his leg so that it stained the snow red around his left knee._

_When we saw the Templar there, I think we all feared he was one of the approaching legion, and I leveled my crossbow on him. But Cole went to him, pulling him upright with shocking ease given the fact that the Templar was fully armored in everything but his helm._

_“This is Ser Barris the good Templar,” Cole informed us, which seemed an oddly specific way to introduce anyone. “I convinced him to quit their castle a month ago. Whispered, willed, winnowed him out of their grasp. He has destroyed many demons, and some of his red brothers, and he cried over their corpses. I don’t think he knows I’m real.”_

_With that bizarre statement--how could anyone not know if their own companion was real?--Cole deposited Barris in the Iron Bull’s arms and went to the Herald and his advisors._

 

_**_

 

Delrin awoke with the taste of lyrium hot upon his tongue. He felt it singing faith into his bones, and he lay warm in his blankets in the darkness, seeping gratitude into the world.

But inch by inch the world crept into his awareness in return, and he blinked, and wondered why it was so dark. The blanket on him didn’t feel like his own; he felt fur on the bare skin of his face instead of the heavy quilted layers he was used to. And to his left came an irregular purring sound, a rasp whose meaning he couldn’t place until all at once he realized it was a snore.

Who was that?

With some effort, Delrin pushed himself up on weak arms. A tiny blade of light was just visible at his feet, and when he reached out to it, he found thick fabric. He traced it down and felt where it tied onto the fabric surface below and around him.

From somewhere far away, an animal bellowed, and nearby came the crunching, jingling footsteps of someone in wearing metal and walking through snow. They passed close before the sound retreated. The snore to Delrin’s left halted with a sharp nasal inhale, leaving the close space in silence.

“Ah, you’re awake,” said a deep unfamiliar voice. “If you’re wondering where you are, you’re with the Inquisition, in my tent, and it’s probably just before dawn. I’m the Iron Bull, head of the Bull’s Chargers mercenary company. You’re in here with me because you had to go somewhere, there’s not a lot of space to go around just now, and the Chargers are used to doubling up.”

“I, er,” Delrin fumbled, awkwardly searching his memory for clues about how on earth he’d ended up not only at his destination but in some strange man’s tent. But there was nothing, a blank, where the knowledge of these events should have been. “I don’t seem to remember,” he admitted after a pause.

A soft rustling told Delrin that the Iron Bull (and what kind of name was that?) had shifted. “I’m not surprised, you weren’t in the best shape when you arrived. The kid said it was lyrium withdrawals, so we got you a dose of lyrium and you calmed right down. Fell asleep on me while I got your armor off about an hour ago.”

Lyrium withdrawals. _That_ , at least, Delrin could remember. He’d been rationing the two bottles he brought with him out of Therinfal, but even on the slimmest fraction of his normal dose those had lasted a week and a half. Everything after that became a dim blur.

“But I made it to Haven,” he stated, half-asking for another confirmation. Another pair of footsteps went by outside the tent, this set soft and slow. In the distance he could hear voices, and what sounded like an infant crying.

“Mm. I scrounged up some elfroot to put on your wounds, but there isn’t much to go around right now so you’re already forming some nice scars. How’re you feeling?”

 _Wounds?_  Delrin’s attention turned inward, frantically searching himself for damage. Now he was paying attention, there was a tight sore spot at his right hip. He fumbled at it with his hands, found he was still wearing the heavy winter clothes he’d had on under his armor, and his brain finally decided to supply his nose with the awareness of how _rank_ his clothes were. He smelled like death and burned armpit, acrid and sour. Cheeks flaming with embarrassment at the realization that he was fouling the air in here and the Iron Bull could undoubtedly smell it, Delrin finally got his hand down the side of his breeches and felt the puckered skin of a recently-closed wound. It started just beside his hipbone and cut down to the top of his buttock, and his breeches were stiff with what had to be dried blood.

Gooseflesh prickled up over Delrin’s arms and neck as the horror of it sank home. He had no memory of how he’d been wounded, either.

“I don’t know,” Delrin answered after far too long a pause. The words came out shaky and small. “I don’t know how to feel.”

“Yeah,” the Iron Bull sighed, sounding unsurprised. “So how about you lie back down and sleep for another hour or two? I’m told I’m nice and warm.”

For several long breaths Delrin stared at the slit in the heavy fabric where both light and cold air crept into the darkness of the tent. He listened to the howling of the wind and the movements outside the tent, which spoke of a large group of people and animals all camped tight together in a wide, windy place.

 _Maker, what have I done?_ He asked, silent. No answer came.

For lack of anything else to do, Delrin lay back down as directed, curling onto his left side and into the warmth of the body beside him. The Iron Bull was a big man, that much was clear from the feel of him, and he pulled the fur blankets up around them to seal in the heat and (thankfully) the smell of Delrin’s unwashed body and clothes. The skin of the man’s bare arm was smooth against Delrin’s chilled knuckles, but the Iron Bull made no move to withdraw from the touch.

Delrin tried to bring back the grateful contentment he’d felt upon first waking, but it was gone, leaving behind it only the bitter cry of the wind. The Iron Bull breathed slow and deep so that his belly rose and fell, subtly moving the furs with it, until the breaths settled back into that purring snore. Delrin lay and listened.

Prayer arose in Delrin, slow and muddled as his thoughts sank into the bedding.

 _Blessed Andraste, Beloved of the Maker,_ he began, eyes slipping closed, though it made little difference in the night. _I don’t know what happened. Please tell me I made the right choice in leaving Therinfal. Please tell me it wasn’t a mistake._

As his thoughts slanted again into unconsciousness, familiar words slipped into his mind: _Oh Maker, hear my cry. Guide me through the blackest nights, and steel my heart against the temptations of the wicked. Make me to rest in the warmest places...._

The prayer trailed off into dreams in which the Maker came to him in soft grey armor and lifted him away from the world.


	2. Blessed Are the Peacekeepers

A letter sent from Skyhold to the Barris estate

_Dear Mother, Father, and Corram,_

_I am alive and safe with the Inquisition. As I’m sure you’ve heard, it seems I left the Order only just in time. I arrived at Haven a mere hour or so before the main body of the Red Templar army, so the Inquisition forces took me with them when they left. I would have died had I even slept in that morning. The Maker and His bride must be watching out for me, and I am very grateful to be able to write this to you._

_It has been three weeks since we arrived at the new Inquisition headquarters, Skyhold. It has taken this long to get a mail service running again, but thanks to the valiant efforts of our ambassador, Lady Josephine Montilyet of Antiva, we are not only reconnected to the world but soon to become a stop on several major trade routes. A learned child is a blessing upon her parents and unto the Maker, and her family must think of that portion of the Chant every day for what she does for us._

_I must confess, however, that the Inquisition is a very lonely place for me. The Herald is a free mage who has never known the confines of a Circle, and he recruited the rebel mages to his cause. As a result, the services of a Templar are unwanted and unwelcome by many here._

_The Herald--newly named the Inquisitor, so I suppose I should be using that title--has at least been kind to me the twice that I’ve met him, so he bears me no ill will. (And yes, he is every bit as big as you’ve heard. Bigger probably. The top of my head comes up to his navel!! I don’t know why Qunari mages are so much larger than their peers, but I’m almost glad the Circles are destroyed, because I can’t imagine where we’d house any mages like the Inquisitor.)_

_On the trek to Skyhold, I was taken in by another Qunari, a man known as the Iron Bull, and his mercenary company, the Bull’s Chargers. (He is fond of bad puns, alas.) I thought perhaps I might be able to acquaint myself with them, but since arriving, Bull and the Chargers have been absent from Skyhold, away on other tasks. The Chargers were, in fact, sent to investigate Therinfal Redoubt, to see what information can be gleaned there about the Red Templars. (I have already been exhaustively questioned by Commander Cullen and Madame Leliana. The experience was awkward and terrible.) I am glad I was not sent with the Chargers, because I have no wish to see the place ever again. But instead I have been conscripted into the construction efforts, clearing out fallen beams and weeding the ancient, overgrown garden. Wholesome work, to be sure, and nothing to be ashamed of, but not what my training prepared me for. And there is no prospect of being able to use my skills anytime soon, either. Commander Cullen believes we have more need than ever of Templars, given the great number of mages we have among our ranks, but his opinion is outweighed by the Inquisitor, Ambassador Montilyet, and Madame Leliana, former Left Hand of Divine Justinia. So I am hauling water, timber, and cement around the castle._

_Perhaps I need to accept that the portion of my life in which I was a Templar is now over. I do not know._

_I hope all of you are safe as well. Please write back to let me know that you are. Maybe someday when Skyhold is rebuilt, you can visit me here. Or I can leave to visit you. I wish I could come live with you, but I cannot do without lyrium for that long. My journey to Haven amply proved that. And while the Inquisition has shaken up the world order by getting access to lyrium for itself, I doubt you would be able to do the same without a great deal of black market involvement and potential scandal._

_Your loving son and brother,_

_Delrin Barris_

 

**

 

From a letter sent to Skyhold from Redcliffe

_Barris’ records show no indication of corruption or abuse, despite having come of age in Kinloch Hold. In place of the expected accounts of abuse and exploitation, there are many records of Barris being disciplined for challenging orders on the mages’ behalf. The records show that by a single year into his tenure as a Knight, Barris had become the Templar of choice to which the mages of Kinloch took their grievances. It is no wonder he never progressed beyond the basic rank of Knight despite his noted skill in combat. As the ensuing years passed, he was sent away from the Tower more and more often, clearly in an effort to separate the mages from their defender. But Barris had laid groundwork among five other Templars, who took up on behalf of the mages in his stead. (One of the five appears to have been his lover, though I cannot get clear information on which.) One of those five died mysteriously just across the lake from the Tower two years before the uprising, while the others were also routinely sent on tasks away from Kinloch. Barris and three of the others were away from the Tower when the uprising took place, and the one remaining was killed in the fighting. It is nothing short of a miracle that Barris has survived this long._

 

_**_

 

From a missive delivered in Skyhold from Leliana to Commander Cullen

_The man you asked about has no history like yours. He will nonetheless be watched, not least because he has already endured several attacks on his property and living space designed to make him feel unwelcome in the Inquisition. Despite the extreme deprivation he endured on his journey to Haven, there are no signs of him taking more than his daily allotment of lyrium now it is readily available._

_If this man is a spy for the Templars, he is very bad at it. Mostly he seems to be bored and lonely._

 

**

 

Delrin watched Bull spar with Krem, late morning light glinting off Krem’s armor and Bull’s shoulders, and the words just fell out of Delrin’s mouth without his permission.

“You’re able to feel magic, right?”

Bull took advantage of Krem’s moment of distraction at the question to hook the blade of his massive axe behind Krem’s knee and topple him onto the packed dirt of the sparring ring. Krem shot Delrin an irritated look, but rolled up onto his feet a moment later, shrugging off the heavy landing even though it would undoubtedly leave him with bruises.

Bull crossed over to the fence at the edge of the ring, near where Delrin stood, and leaned on the haft of his greataxe. The movement shifted the muscles of Bull’s massive shoulders, and Delrin thought that his time with the Templars, with their layers of heavy armor emblazoned with Andraste’s symbols, had not prepared him for seeing someone like Bull fighting shirtless with sweat drops rolling down the curves of his biceps.

“When someone tries to freeze or burn me or whatever, yeah, of course I can feel it,” Bull replied, eyes searching Delrin’s face. Delrin missed his lost helmet more than ever, then, wishing yet again that he hadn’t managed to lose it on the road to Haven. It would have given him something to hide behind now.

Delrin gestured at the mages nearby in the training yard. They were practicing freezing spells, though they apparently still had the spare focus to shoot Delrin dirty looks. He figured they’d prefer to freeze _him_ rather than the practice dummies. Despite the fact that he’d defected from the Order and developed a fairly positive reputation at Kinloch, he was still known to be a Templar. It hadn’t earned him any love from the rebel mages, or indeed the Inquisition that had welcomed them. A few had approached him privately to say they felt safer with a Templar around and were glad he’d survived, but none of them would speak to him in public.

“No, I don’t mean when someone casts a spell directly _on_ you,” Delrin clarified, making himself look at Bull without staring. _Eyes on the face,_ he told himself. “I meant, can you feel the pull on the Fade when someone is casting magic nearby?”

Bull gave him a considering look, and Delrin realized, not for the first time, exactly how huge the Qunari was. And how very shirtless. Very huge, very shirtless. _The face,_ Delrin repeated. _Look at the face, not anywhere else._

“Yeah, I can feel it. Are you asking because you weren’t sure if Qunari were able?”

Delrin dropped his eyes right to the ground, the question efficiently killing his interest. “Maker, no! I apologize, that wasn’t what I meant at all. It’s just....” he swallowed, anxiety and shame for his faux-pas making words difficult to find. Really it was just that he missed the Order, and wished to express his gratitude to Bull in the hopes of making a friend, which he already seemed to have bungled. In the Order, for better or worse, he’d known some of his peers for more than a decade, and spending that long in anyone’s company developed intimacy. But here, his Templar training and daily lyrium philters set him apart even from the other fighters. Watching the Chargers practice, it was obvious how different their tactics were from his.

“I ask because I wondered if you’d be interested in learning some Templar skills,” Delrin admitted at last, and regretted it even as his mouth shaped the words. Had he been distracted by all the naked grey flesh, so desperate for company that a handsome body made him take leave of his senses? Not only was this divulging secrets of the Order, there was no way the offer would come across as anything other than an insult to the Bull’s skill as a fighter. “I heard that you especially hate demons,” Delrin hastened to explain, “and Tevinter mages as a group, and since we’re so often fighting demons and Venatori, I thought you might find the skills useful.”

In truth, Dorian had said Bull was ‘unreasonably terrified of demons, and quite reasonably irritated by most of my countrymen.’ But it seemed rude to bring that up in public. Well, ruder than implying that Bull’s current fighting skills weren’t enough, or that Delrin knew better. One of the only people who’d spend time with a known Templar was, ironically, the Inquisition’s one Tevinter mage. Dorian was a charming man, and handsome, but given the fact that his ancestry made him just as unwelcome in the Inquisition as Delrin, all their acquaintanceship achieved was to make their mutual loneliness more obvious to both. Plus, Dorian seemed to spend most of his time away with the Inquisitor.

Delrin braced himself for an angry reply to his presumptuous offer, but instead Bull smiled, the scars on his face moving into interesting new patterns.

“Thought you Templar types weren’t meant to share the secrets of the trade,” Bull grinned down at him, and gave him what was, from Bull, a very gentle smack on the shoulder. It clanged against Delrin’s still-dented armor. “Besides, doesn’t it require lyrium?”

A pang of guilt went through Delrin at the pointed reminder of his lapsed loyalty, but he ignored it. Commander Cullen had left the Order too, Delrin reminded himself, and was even now teaching Inquisition soldiers these same skills. Bull could, if he chose, listen in on their training across the courtyard, so it hardly mattered what Delrin did or did not disclose.

But that thought gave Delrin only the most fleeting comfort. He’d heard all about Cullen’s actions in Kinloch Hold and Kirkwall, as they were often discussed within the Order. If Delrin had stooped to emulating _Cullen...._

Maker, standing this close, there was just so much grey skin, and the almost-black nipples were right at a height to be looked at. Delrin’s mind pulled in two directions at once, trying to both ignore the quantity of Qunari on display and ignore the guilt that bubbled up through him like acid.

“Our skills are greatly amplified by lyrium, yes,” Delrin admitted after a brief, agonizing pause. “But with concentration and training, any layperson can learn the basics. If you are not interested, however--”

“Teach us both,” Bull said, nodding his head to indicate Krem standing nearby. “If this one ever goes back to Tevinter, it’ll be a useful skill for him to have.”

“Not gonna happen, Chief,” Krem sighed. “I can write letters to my family just fine, even if my handwriting isn’t as frilly as yours.”

“It’s called calligraphy, Krem,” Bull sniped back, and then returned his sea-green gaze to Delrin. “Your offer is very generous, thank you. We accept.”

Delrin smiled in relief, and because smiling hid the doubt and shame.

 

**

 

To Delrin’s surprise, that evening Bull invited him to drink with the Chargers. Skyhold did not yet have a tavern, but an impromptu one had sprung up in the rooms near the kitchens, where people bought and sold the alcohol they'd managed to bring with them from Haven and generally spent time socializing. A number of eyes watched Delrin cross to the corner of the room where the Chargers held their nightly gathering, and a few gazes softened when Delrin took a seat at Bull’s side and was pulled warmly up against him.

Up this close, Delrin could smell the bigger man. There were all the smells one would expect while in a tavern beside a warrior whose weapons and armor were in good repair--metal polish and leather oil, beer and ales of various descriptions, and a faint odor of piss wafting in from the back door even despite it being closed. But winding through all that was the smell of Bull himself, a bright, thick smell Delrin couldn’t really describe. It wasn’t what Delrin had come to associate with human men, exactly, but it was clearly the smell of a warm body that had sweated throughout the day.

Delrin felt heat rise up his neck. Even without the weight of armor, his clothes felt too heavy on him, claustrophobic in the heat of the crowd.

“Your pet Templar came back for seconds?” asked an elf seated on the table in front of them. She bared her teeth at Delrin in an expression that in no way resembled a smile. Delrin looked away, digging a fingernail into the wooden handle of his tankard. Even after spending weeks loosely attached to Bull, Delrin still hadn't met all the Chargers. The group included around thirty members, and they had been spread throughout the Inquisition, helping wherever they were needed.

“Go easy on him,” Bull chided, voice gentle. “Barris, this is Skinner. She loves killing humans, so make sure not to get on her bad side. Skinner, this is Barris, who’s making sure your boss doesn’t get possessed.”

“None of the things I taught you today will prevent poss--”

“Yeah, but you’ll cover that next, right?” Krem interrupted, leaning forward with a grin.

For half a second, Delrin paused, unable to find the words to answer. He had walked away from the Order, yes, endured more than a month of solitary travel on infinitesimally-rationed lyrium. He’d been told that he’d arrived at Haven half-crazed with the lack and basically fallen into Bull’s open arms. And maybe it was natural to feel so desperate to please the person who’d carried him through the snow north of Haven when he could no longer walk.

But it was one thing to leave the Order, another to teach the Chantry’s hoarded knowledge to a self-professed Qunari spy. And yet....the Templar Order was broken open like a rotten melon, and everyone had seen how the insides glittered red with corruption. The Order might never be remade, or if it was, maybe not in a way Delrin would want to be a part of. He had known for more than a decade now that the Circles were subject to the abuses of unscrupulous Templars and needed reform, but the fact that the Order could foster something like _this...._

“Yes, of course,” Delrin found himself saying. “Given the enemies facing the Inquisition, I must give my all.”

Sooner or later he’d start to believe it, he told himself. In the meantime, Bull’s massive hand squeezed tight around Delrin’s shoulder, comfortingly heavy, and the ale Bull bought for him went down in cool, soothing swallows.

All the Templars Delrin had known were either dead or corrupted now. He didn’t dare think about it often; he’d damn near lost his mind in the days after Haven, and crying in the middle of a crowded tavern was the opposite of making a good impression.

The Inquisition had to be enough. There was nothing else, now.

 

**

 

A missive delivered to Leliana

_Our most recent Templar defector has been teaching secrets of the Order to the Chargers. Even the human-hating elf has joined in. Even more amusing is that Barris is clearly smitten with the Captain. Possible site for leverage. Recommend sending Barris on a few missions, preferably in a leadership position, to see what he does._

 

********

 

The Inquisition had the resources to find a horse for a man of Bull’s size.

It was one of many small things demonstrating that the Inquisition was now a force to be reckoned with. Delrin had known it already, of course. He had seen the army and trained with its soldiers. He had seen the tower full of mages, whose ranks swelled every day as mage refugees sought out the mountain stronghold. He had seen the traders who sold their wares in the courtyard as if Skyhold were a city rather than a mere outpost. And he had seen the seemingly-endless warren of tunnels and dungeons beneath the castle that trebled or quadrupled the number of people and stores that could be kept within the bastion.

But it was the little things that really drove home the Inquisition’s reach and power. Not that the massive dray Bull rode was a little thing, Delrin hadn’t known horses even _came_ in that size. But he supposed the Inquisition had been forced to find massive mounts, given the increasing number of Qunari (or Tal-Vashoth and Vashoth, as Bull insisted they be called) who also sought sanctuary in Skyhold.

So Delrin looked at Bull’s tremendous animal and thought that the Inquisition had been a good choice. It was not solely made of idealists, like the Inquisitor, but also pragmatists who knew the workings of money and favors and politics, and could acquire things like horses of a size for a Qunari to ride.

The Exalted Plains spread around them, rocky outcroppings interrupting the grassy plains. At the edges of Delrin’s sight pale halla lifted their heads to watch the Chargers’ progress. The Inquisitor had already closed the rifts here last month, and Inquisition forces had destroyed the last of the demons and undead wandering the countryside, leaving it peaceful and quiet once more. That meant that their path ought to be clear until they reached their goal in Val Colline, where there had been reports of Venatori activity.

“Are there horses in Qunari lands?” Delrin asked at last, curiosity getting the better of him.

Bull turned to look at Delrin, reining in his horse to walk alongside Delrin and his sweet-tempered gelding. Delrin normally associated riding with being higher than those on foot and on a level with other riders, so it was very strange to be on horseback and still have Bull looming over him.

“Yeah, we have horses, but they’re imports and there aren't many.  Qunari rely on other beasts of burden.”

“What beasts?” Delrin pressed, genuinely intrigued. It also gave him an excuse to listen to Bull’s voice without the stress of having to look him in the face. It was getting increasingly hard to look at Bull without blushing, or staring, or generally making an arse of himself. Most Fereldans and Orlesians couldn’t tell when Delrin blushed, but some people could, and Delrin would bet that Bull was one of those people.

“Camels. You ever seen a camel?”

As a child Delrin had once seen one in Denerim’s marketplace. He remembered a beast like a massive goat or elk but hornless, with soft feet and a great wobbling lump of flesh upon its back.

“I believe so, but not since I was small.”

“Well, camels are used some places. We also have something called an _apalakut_ , which is like a mix of a gurgut and a varghest. Big fuckin’ reptiles, look like they could kill you, but prefer to eat plants. Don’t spook as easily as horses, either, since they have no natural predators.”

“That sounds amazing,” Delrin sighed, wistful. He got along tolerably well with horses, and was a skilled enough horseman, but that was mostly because he insisted upon the most tolerant of mounts. “What about cows? Do you have those?”

Bull laughed. “Yeah, we sure do. I grew up seeing herds of them with racks like mine. People down here in the south have very different breeds of cattle, and they all look kinda sad by comparison. Ours have massive horns and big wattles of loose skin on the underside of their necks. Helps them lose heat. Saying someone has a ‘rack like a cow’ is a compliment in Qunlat. Means you’ve got _big_ horns.”

 _You’ve got big everything, so I hear,_ Delrin thought. “That explains your name, then,” Delrin replied instead, earning himself a grin. “So Qunari must have cheese, and things like that,” Delrin continued, thoughtful, imagining food in Par Vollen. But Bull let out a bark of laughter, making his horse turn back its ears in irritation. At this, Delrin pulled himself from his reverie of food and muscles and looked over, baffled.

“You’re a Fereldan through and through,” Bull chuckled, shaking his head. “Yeah, we have cheese, but it’s nothing like yours. Ours doesn’t melt, doesn’t ever come with mold on purpose, and is eaten fresh rather than aged.”

Delrin smiled and ducked his head at this; he couldn’t deny that he did have the Ferelden taste for fine cheeses. “I’d love to try Qunari food sometime,” he admitted.

“I was never much good as a cook, but I could probably figure out how to make it for you if Josephine could get me the right spices,” Bull smiled, looking slyly over at Delrin. Delrin looked away, wondering: had that been flirtation? He was never sure, with Bull. Everyone knew that Bull didn’t get attached to the people he slept with, which by this point seemed to be half the Inquisition. But he had never slept with Delrin, or even tried. So probably it _was_ flirtation, but still didn’t _mean_ anything.

Delrin wanted it to mean something.

“I would enjoy that,” Delrin mumbled, hot under his armor even in the biting wind of early fall, “if it wouldn’t be a great deal of trouble.”

“I won’t pretend I can imitate the chefs in Par Vollen, so you might not like it in the end.” Bull shrugged, looking unconcerned, and his mare snorted under him as though in derision. Bull patted her on the neck.

“Tell me about it? Par Vollen, I mean. Or other cities in Qunandar, I don’t know where you spent time. What is it like?” When Delrin snuck a glance, the amusement faded out of Bull’s face, leaving him almost....pensive? Had that been a wrong question to ask?

“Haven’t been there in years, truthfully,” Bull said after a pause. “I was sent to Seheron at twenty-six, and except for a brief return right after, I haven’t been in Qunandar in....oh, more than a decade, now.”

“Oh,” Delrin subsided, realizing he had well and truly put his foot in his mouth this time. Delrin had just wanted to know more about Bull, but the cultural gulf between them often seemed impassable. And worse still, this admission of Bull’s approximate age made Delrin wonder if he was too young to be of any interest to the other man. Delrin was only twenty-seven. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to bring up a sensitive subject.”

The apology got a snort, this time from Bull rather than his mount. “You didn’t. _Seheron_ isn’t a pretty topic of conversation, and you don’t want to hear about it. But my memories from Par Vollen are good ones.”

The conversation went more smoothly after that, to Delrin’s relief. Bull did indeed seem happy to tell him about the food, the architecture, the music and literature.

“So are most of the books about....” Delrin searched for words, not wanting to phrase this wrong, “about the Qun, and being a Qunari?”

“Yes and no,” Bull answered, and his smile was gentle, warm. Which didn’t mean anything, Delrin reminded himself again. “As a Qunari, _life_ is about being part of the Qun. The way you relate to people is about that, the things you do are about that, how you feel and respond is about that. Qunlat as a language is even structured in a way that reinforces the Qun, so lots of our idioms reflect aspects of it. So yeah, embodying one’s role is a central recurring theme in Qunari literature, but that’s not to say there aren’t different genres. We’ve got tragedies and comedies like anyone else.”

“I’d like to read one someday. If, er,” Delrin stumbled again, belatedly thinking through what he was saying, “if they’re even translatable. Or have ever been translated.”

“You’re out of luck there, unless you want to learn Qunlat. But I could tell you some popular stories.”

At that an expression came into in Bull’s face again, one that had been showing up more and more often as Delrin found excuses to spend time with the Chargers. In anyone else, Delrin would have considered it very flattering indeed: it was a look that indicated one’s finer qualities were being appraised and that the process was enjoyable and its outcome satisfactory. But he and Bull were, Delrin thought, already too close for a casual fling, and Delrin didn’t just want one night of sex.

“I would be grateful,” Delrin admitted helplessly, and the words felt too naked, too honest. So he changed the subject, and stared out across the Plains so he wouldn’t look at Bull. The first frosts hadn’t yet killed the grass, so the countryside was a rich verdant sprawl, winds making the plains ripple and shiver. “I suppose you must already know everything about Andraste and the Maker, given how long you’ve been in the South.”

“It’s a good story,” Bull said amiably, and Delrin swallowed down the pang at this small dismissal. “You’re Andrastian, right?”

“Most Templars are,” Delrin hedged. He found that he was embarrassed to admit to Bull that he considered himself devout. Would Bull find it quaint, or worse still, offensive in some way? Delrin didn’t want either. He was tense enough that he pulled unthinking on the reins, causing his horse to slow. He had to force himself to relax, loosen his arms. “We are, after all, trained by the Chantry.”

“That doesn’t mean anything.” Bull snorted, seeing through the avoidance right away, as Delrin should have supposed he would. “Just look at what the revered mothers are doing, chasing their own tails and forcing us to do their work while Thedas goes to shit. _They’d_ call themselves Andrastian, sure, but you can see they don’t really _live_ it, despite the titles.”

“‘Live it’?” Delrin inquired. He thought he understood what Bull meant, but their prior conversation had just demonstrated how different the Qunari viewpoint was from the Andrastian one. Maybe it meant something different to Bull.

“Yeah. You’re supposed to live by Andraste’s example, right?” Bull grimaced. “I may be a godless heathen, but I don’t think she’d have argued in circles while the sky was shitting out demons. Andraste seems more like the type to buckle on her armor, pick up a weapon, and get down to business.”

At this, Delrin let out a sad little laugh and felt bitterness tighten his chest, aching below his sternum. All the good Templars he’d once known, those who would have done as Bull said Andraste would, were now dead.

“Yes,” Delrin agreed, trying to keep his voice soft. “That was my thought, when I left the Order.”

“That’s because you _live_ it,” Bull proclaimed, pointing at Delrin for emphasis. “You see things that need doing, and you get down and do them, even if it’s hard. It’s a rare trait among humans.” Delrin didn’t dare look at him, cheeks burning, but Bull let out a warm sound that told Delrin that Bull was smiling. “Matter of fact, you’d make a damn good Qunari. I don’t suppose you’re in the market for conversion?”

“No!” Delrin said at once, shocked into a response. But then he smiled, and shook his head slowly, daring a look at Bull. Bull’s expression was contented, open, the afternoon sun glinting off his metal eyepatch. Delrin wondered what was underneath it, and if Bull ever took the patch off. Delrin shifted the reins into one hand, stroking the gloved fingers of his other hand over his horse’s neck. The horse whickered beneath him. “No,” Delrin repeated slowly, “but am I right in thinking it’s a compliment, you saying I’d make a good Qunari?”

“Absolutely. You remind me of people I knew back in Par Vollen. You know your role in the world, and you truly believe in doing what’s best for others, even at your own expense. That’s very Qunari.”

“I--” Delrin stumbled over his words, and his horse turned its ears back at him in irritation again at his tense hold on the reins. “Thank you. I value your opinion a great deal.” A thought occurred to him then, and he glanced at Bull, a little embarrassed to ask it. But it wouldn’t let him alone, until at last he gave it voice. “Do you think it’s likely that other Qunari will come south? That there will be an invasion? With a disaster like the Breach, even sealed as it now is, I imagine they’re concerned.”

“It’s why I’m here, yeah,” Bull answered, with more honesty than Delrin had expected. Bull’s face was neutral, perhaps carefully so, as he went on. “There was some talk of invading, since this time the South has mucked things up so badly the whole world is at risk. That talk hasn’t really calmed down much since Corypheus showed up. But I tell you what, if an invasion does happen, I’ll put in a good word for you with the re-educators.”

Delrin swallowed anxiously. “Re-educators?”

Bull’s horse turned its ears back, nostrils flaring as if something had spooked it. Bull leaned back a bit in the saddle, making a series of soft noises in the back of his throat, and the animal calmed.

“The south doesn’t really have any equivalent jobs, more’s the pity. But the re-educators are the people who help you out when you’ve gone astray, and get newcomers up to speed with living as a Qunari. I think _you’d_ do just fine with them. Others, not so much. The Qun answers a lot of questions, but it’s not for everybody.”

Bull filled the rest of the afternoon’s travel with Qunari stories, including a very funny one about a baker in Par Vollen. By the time they made camp that evening, the ache of longing that filled Delrin from breastbone to wrists was impossible to ignore.

 

**

 

A letter delivered to the Barris estate from Orlais

_Corram,_

_Don’t tell our parents this, but I’ve developed the worst possible attachment. You remember the Qunari mercenary I’ve been writing about? Yeah, him. I’m well aware of the endless mockery I’m opening myself to for telling you this, but I have to tell someone, and it seems inappropriate to talk to Bull’s own men about it. So you’re the lucky one._

_We’re on our way to fight Tevinter mages who support Corypheus. It’s probably risky, but at this point, I’ll be happy if I even manage to make it there without tripping face-first into Bull’s lap because I was too busy staring at his chest._

_It’s not just his looks, though. He’s clever, and funny when it’s not horrible puns, and it’s fascinating to hear about the Qun. Really don’t tell Father this, but the Qun makes more sense than I thought it would. Bull told me something recently: “Doubt is the path one walks to reach faith.” I’ve been thinking about it all day. You’re not much of an Andrastian, I know, but it means something to me to hear that, even if the context of the words aren’t about the Maker. And Bull recited some Qunari poetry for me. Badly translated, he says, but it contained this: “Solitude is illusion. Alone in the darkness, I was surrounded on all sides.” It was a shock to hear that, as it reminded me so much of the Chant of Light: “I shall not be left to wander the drifting roads of the Fade, for there is no darkness, nor death either, in the Maker's Light, and nothing that He has wrought shall be lost.” Or even my favorite lines from the the Canticle of Andraste: “You have forgotten, spear-maid of Alamarr: within My creation, none are alone.”_

_But I say this is the worst possible attachment for a reason. Bull sleeps with absolutely everyone but me, because “Qunari don’t sleep with their friends,” and we’re already friends so I missed my chance. So basically I just torture myself with his company all the time. I was never much for the flagellant orders within Andrastianism, but sometimes when I’m with Bull I feel like I’ve found my way into one of those sects._

_Your foolhardy and suffering brother,_

_Delrin Barris_

 

**

 

From a report delivered by raven to the library tower of Skyhold:

_Mission in Val Colline a success. Barris a very competent leader in this instance, and exceptionally skilled in combat. Unusually potent in anti-magic techniques. Silenced six Venatori mages at once, killed four of them himself, and his training of the Chargers in Templar techniques granted them victory that might not otherwise have been achievable. Venatori all killed except for a warrior we have taken for questioning. Further information to come._

_Five Chargers injured in the action, one may have to retire from active duty due to having lost most of a leg. Barris suggested asking the Tranquil of Skyhold to design a prosthetic, and Bull immediately agreed. Recommend beginning on project now, before the casualties return to Skyhold. Bull very attached to his men - possible site for leverage. Barris very attached to Bull, poor bastard._


	3. The Children of the Maker

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: this chapter is the one that includes the "major character injury" portion of the fic. I don't think it is very graphically described, but please mind your own needs in reading this section.

From a missive delivered by raven to Val Colline:

_Ser Barris,_

_We have received news of a town north of your location, Ansburg, which is overrun by demons. No known nearby rifts, so they are of limited number and they must have migrated from somewhere else. Our information estimates around twenty demons of common types, chiefly rage and despair. Proceed with the Chargers to Ansburg and destroy all demons you find. Something must have drawn them there, however, so caution is merited. There may be abominations among the townsfolk._

_Maker be with you,_

_Commander Cullen of the Inquisition_

 

**

 

The massive rage demon barreled down the narrow street toward Delrin, leaving the cobbles smoking and cracked in its wake. He felt the shape of the beast in his mind, felt the Fade-power churning rich in its body as it lit the dark alley from below.

Delrin bared his teeth at it, settled his shield on his arm, reached out with his mind into the demon’s roiling center, and _pushed,_ dispelling its power.

Its light flickered, guttering like a candle in a draft. In the absence of the demon’s molten heat, the smoky shadow of its body stumbled and fell, dropping cinders that glowed on the stones at its feet.

A rage demon this strong could only be suppressed for a short window of time, so Delrin’s feet pounded down as he ran toward it, the impacts jarring up his sore legs, already tired from fighting. But his blade met the charred throat, cutting through the fleshless body and separating the head with a gout of spinning ash.

Delrin choked on the smoke and dust, squeezing his eyelids shut against the heat of the dissolving corpse. A few moments later he blinked cautiously, casting his watery gaze up the street, and saw Bull leap onto the shoulders of a massive pride demon, breaking open its skull with his axe.

In its death throes it emitted a crackling wave of lightning, and for a horrified moment Delrin was sure it would ignite the timber of the nearby houses. But Delrin felt Bull _pull_ against the magic, suppressing it with a vicious power that left Delrin even more breathless than before, as though Bull had nullified Delrin’s own heartbeat as well as the magic.

Bull had taken to Templar techniques with an aptitude rare in all but the most experienced of Templars. Delrin rarely seen anyone this capable of nullifying magic and killing demons without the aid of lyrium, and every time Delrin saw it he felt more in awe.

Caught up in watching Bull and wiping soot off his face, Delrin heard the heavy thud of something landing behind him just a moment too late. He turned and saw nothing but teeth, the massive despair demon’s maw opening to reveal rings of glistening incisors. _Must have dropped from the rooftops,_ Delrin thought inanely in the split second before he raised his shield.

Delrin tried to smite it, but he had already spent most of his remaining power on the rage demon. What should have been a great force of destruction was a mere ripple of disturbance, which only succeeded in irritating the demon and making it hiss and strike at him.

He turned his sword just in time to slice through its hand, earning him a shriek of agony and the patter of fingers hitting his breastplate. But then it was on him, knocking him down and slamming into his back. It clawed at his armor, digging into the meat of his leg and tearing at the leather holding his platemail in place. His left arm was twisted under him, pinned by the straps of his shield so he could not even roll to escape. Icy teeth and claws sank again into his thigh and pulled, tearing something loose and turning his whole left side into screaming, boiling agony--

The magic emptied from the air with a great _whump_ Delrin felt rather than heard. Heat washed over him as though he’d stepped from a cold room into hot sunlight, and the demon let out one last yowl before Bull’s axe cleaved through its torso. The monster collapsed in pieces, its insides hitting the nearby buildings with a clatter of icy shards.

Delrin could barely breathe, the blinding pain of his leg sealing his throat closed. He tried to force his lungs to open, but heartbeat after heartbeat passed, and he couldn’t, he _couldn’t_. His sight narrowed into a dark tunnel.

A tiny coherent part of him was grateful that he was going to pass out so he could die without more pain. His body felt far away already, distant as though he were watching it from somewhere far away from all the blood and noise. Was this what death felt like? If so, he wanted to be past this dim nothingness already. He was eager to move on and find Andraste and the Maker. There was no more Golden City, Corypheus had destroyed that, but there would be somewhere else, somewhere secret and still bright and waiting for him.

Dispassionately he noticed a great pressure on the tattered remains of his thigh. A low intermittent hum was all the sound that got through to wherever he was, but he thought there was a voice that kept saying his name. Something pushed into his lax mouth and a liquid spilled down his throat so he convulsively swallowed--

Delrin tumbled back into his body as though he’d been dropped, gasping and coughing as the familiar sourness of distilled elfroot seared through him. A thin blue stripe of sky spun above him, orbiting around a grey smudge in the center of it. Dark spots danced in his vision and he didn’t know what was happening anymore, but the thing pushed into his mouth again until he swallowed, choking on more potion.

Several throbbing, awful moments followed until slowly the world settled around him. The pain faded from unbearable to mere agony, and the grey shape at the edge of Delrin’s vision resolved into Iron Bull’s face. It moved back and forth as Bull turned from Delrin’s face to his leg, pulling aside the tattered scraps of Delrin’s armor to get a better look. Whatever he saw there forced a long sigh from him, his eyes squeezing closed for the space of several heartbeats.

“Shit, Kadan,” Bull breathed, blinking down at Delrin. “You just about skipped out on me there.”

Delrin’s mouth didn’t work. He couldn’t make it form words. But he managed to shake his head, just a little, and that earned him a weak grin.

“Don’t lie to me. You were gonna leave me alone to kill the rest of these demons. Fuck if I know where the rest of the Chargers are, this town is a goddamn maze. What idiot builds a place like this?”

Delrin’s head lay cushioned on one of Bull’s thick thighs, and when Delrin shook his head again, he felt the muscle flex beneath him as Bull shifted.

“Gonna just strap my axe onto my back and then I’ll lift you, Kadan. Let’s get you out of here.”

Delrin just blinked up at him, attention taken up again with the pain. Wasn’t elfroot potion supposed to fix that?

When Bull hooked his right arm under Delrin’s legs, the motion pulled at the wound. The sudden silent shriek of his damaged flesh overwhelmed what little of him was left, and Delrin faded out.

 

**

 

People were talking. He registered the voices before they resolved into words.

“Someone needs to watch him.”

“Come on, y’big oaf, no one is dying! This isn’t Seheron, and it isn’t Val Colline, either. Nobody’s lost a leg.”

“Don’t you fuckin’ sass me right now. He almost died in my arms and I’m covered in his blood.”

“It’s not sass, it’s fact. I know you too well for your stoic, ‘rational’ Qunari bullshit to work on me anymore, and you only pull that when you’re upset anyway. Somebody needs to watch him, yeah, but it doesn’t need to be you. _You_ need to go have a meal to maintain those ridiculous tits of yours.” A brief pause. “ _That’s_ sass. Or are you so tired you can’t tell the difference?”

A long sigh, and then silence. Delrin curled his fingers under the blanket, but couldn’t find the will to move anything else. Then footsteps padded away over creaking floorboards.

In the ensuing silence, Delrin blurred in and out of consciousness. He finally jolted awake when he tried to roll onto his back and was stopped by a hand on his shoulder and a sudden nauseating ripple of pain from his thigh.

“Wouldn’t advise you do that, ser. Your leg’s a bit of a mess.”

Delrin let out a groan, confirming to Krem that he was now _very_ aware of this fact.

“What happened?” Delrin asked, when he had turned back onto his side and caught his breath from the wave of pain and nausea. He was pretty sure he didn’t have anything in his stomach and it nonetheless wanted to escape.

“Demon took a chunk out of you before the chief took care of it. He got some elfroot into you in time to save your life, but we’re out of elfroot now so we can’t fix your leg any better till we get more potions. Town’s stores are depleted, with everything it’s been through in recent weeks, and the next closest town is two days’ ride away. And before you ask, we’re all out of poppy and willowbark too. I got some strong apple brandy here for you, though, if you want to get drunk. And the Chief brought your pack with your lyrium in it, in case that’d help.”

Delrin’s teeth ached as he ground them together, but for the space of a few seconds, it almost distracted him from his leg. He wanted to be asleep again so he didn’t have to feel the waves of sickening sensation. Panting, Delrin forcing his eyes open to stare up at Krem’s familiar face. One cheek was marred by a gash over the bone that had been stitched rather than magically healed. Another sign of the elfroot shortage, Delrin supposed, and the Chargers’ lack of mages. There was Dalish, of course, but she was an elemental mage, not a healer. The Chargers _really_ needed a proper healing mage.

Krem had his armor off, though, except for the cuirass he wore whenever he took off his platemail. That leather breastplate meant they really had to be safe in whatever this building was, as Krem rarely took off his full armor around strangers, and never in any situation where a fight might be necessary.

“A sip of lyrium, please? And then a cup for the brandy. This is--”

“Real bad, I know, I saw Stitches dressing your wound. You’re not dying though, thanks to the Chief.”

Delrin didn’t want to think about it. Instead he pushed himself up on one elbow with slow, fearful care, only to discover that his left hand and two of its fingers were splinted. He must have broken something when he’d fallen on his shield and not even noticed the damage. It took some finagling on Krem’s part to get Delrin a mouthful of lyrium, but they managed in the end.

The lyrium soothed some of the pain, or at least made him more philosophical about it. The sips of brandy that followed after softened him further, until the pain was present but his senses dulled enough for it to be tolerable.

“Killed the last of the demons,” Krem added conversationally. “We’ve been over the town twice in the last few hours, and the Chief’s been complaining all evening about shitty civic design. Can’t say I disagree, the people who built this place sure did love sharp turns, dead ends, and cramped streets. But it’s mostly that close-quarters urban fighting makes the Chief pissy, though he wouldn’t admit that. Reminds him of his time in Seheron.”

“He doesn’ talk’bout it,” Delrin mumbled, aware that he was slurring. “Seh’ron,” he clarified after a second. “I know what it is, but Bull’s never tol’ me anything.”

The corner of Krem’s mouth opposite his cut curled up, like he was trying to avoid moving that part of his face. “Yeah, that’s just his Qunari issues. Thinks he’s supposed to be all stoic and put-together and he’s a right mess about Seheron, so he just never talks about it. He’s better than he used to be, though. He’s softened up since I met him.”

“Oh?” Delrin invited more talk. _Please_ , he begged silently, _please give me something else to think about._

“Yeah. The Chief used to be more like what everyone expects a Qunari to be. He’s always had a sense of humor, and he’s always been a nosy asshole who liked to know everyone else’s business, which I guess _is_ his job. But his jokes used to be really dry and deadpan, and he didn’t offer his real opinion on anything.” Krem gave a low chuckle, then winced when it moved the cut on his face. “But I think these days he’s just letting out the arsehole he’s always been inside.”

Even Delrin couldn’t help the brief smile this got from him. “I like him this way,” he admitted, and then remembered the breathing exercises the Templars had taught him early in his training. For several seconds he focused on counting out his inhales and exhales, and then he looked up and saw Krem staring at him with a strange expression on his face, almost sad. Delrin let out a puzzled hum, but at this Krem just shook his head and smiled.

“Nothing, I was just thinking.”

They talked for a while about Delrin’s family and the letters he wrote home, and Delrin took several more sips of the (very) strong brandy before Bull walked back in.

Bull’s craggy face broke into a smile when he saw that Delrin was awake. It had been days since Bull had last shaved, so both his scalp and his jaw were dark with his black hair. There were white hairs scattered through it, though, and Delrin loved that: the salt-and-pepper of Bull’s beard, together with the eyepatch, made Bull look distinguished. Or it would have, if he ever wore a shirt. Since he didn’t, it just made him look roguish. Delrin liked that too.

“Hey, big guy,” Bull murmured. The room they were in was clearly someone’s spare, as it was filled with odds and ends and broken furniture. It smelled of dust, and motes danced wildly in what little sunlight filtered through the windows of this town. Bull pulled over a massive wooden trunk and seated himself upon it, since Krem was in the only usable chair, and even that was missing one of its arms. “You look better. How’re you feeling?”

Delrin meant to say _The Chargers need a mage like the Inquisitor, and we should find you one when we return to the Inquisition, because if you had one I wouldn’t be in this situation._ What he did instead was burst into tears.

The floorboards squealed as Bull dragged the trunk closer to the bed, and then big hands wrapped around Delrin’s smaller one, pulling it away from his face. “Hey, you got through it. Saved the town, became a hero. The guard-captain is already talking about putting up a plaque in our honor on the gates, and he wants to raise a statue of you in the town square. Won’t stop talking about the ‘heroism of that Templar.’ Think he’s got a bit of a crush, to be honest.”

“The Templars’re dead, or worse’n dead,” Delrin choked out, and full awareness of his leg roared back as though awoken by the tears. The pain stole his breath but he couldn’t keep the words in and they tumbled out of him in a rush. “Everyone I knew’s killed by their _own_ _brothers_ or in the rebellions, or turned--! Red lyrium an’ _demons_ an’....should’a been _Templars_ here, this’s what we’re _made_ for, we should have--”

Bull’s hands squeezed, the flats of his thumbs digging into Delrin’s hand enough to get his attention. Delrin hiccuped, turning watery eyes up toward Bull.

“Hey, big guy,” Bull repeated, and his voice was so gentle and his hands so warm that it brought another wave of tears. The pillow was getting damp. He stared at his injured hand, unable to think of how to wipe his face if Bull had one hand and the other was broken.

Bull sighed and moved to pull a kerchief out of one of his pockets, letting go of Delrin to press the soft linen into his palm. “You’ve had a lot to drink, by the smell of you, and it’s been a shitty day.” Delrin nodded, unable to refute the truth of this. He’d never had a high tolerance for alcohol, and the day was indeed very shitty. “So what we’re going to do is that you’re gonna breathe for me, slow breaths, and I’m gonna write my weekly letter to my handlers. I’ll read it out to you as I write, so that way I’m keeping my promise to the Inquisition to keep them informed of what the Qun gets from me. And then I’ll tell you some more Qunari stories, if you wanna hear.”

“Yes, please.” Delrin blinked at the room; Krem seemed to have vanished at some point, leaving them alone together. When had Krem gone?

Delrin focused on his breathing as Bull left the room to fetch his writing things, and while Bull set himself up on a wobbly three-legged end-table at Delrin’s bedside.

“Mission to Ansburg a success,” Bull began, and Delrin relaxed at the sound of the familiar voice and the scratch of the nib. “Two casualties, including the commanding officer the Inquisition sent with us, Ser Delrin Barris. The other casualty, Skinner, will recover easily.”

“Skinner’s all right?” Delrin interrupted, now anxious to know. She still didn’t like him much, but he’d picked up some of Bull’s deep fondness for her. She’d been through a lot.

“Yeah, she’s fine. Sprained her ankle falling off a demon. She’s delighted about it. My handlers know who she is already, I’ve written about her a lot over the years. So--” The scratching started up again. Bull had such beautiful handwriting, Delrin wished he could watch. “Twenty-six demons in all, drawn to the town for reasons not yet known. We await supplies from the Inquisition, and have already sent for aid from the next closest town. We requested potions, food, and help rebuilding the town walls, which were destroyed a week ago when the demons first broke in.”

Delrin remembered the massive gates, burned to ash so that only the metal fittings remained. The metal had pooled into squiggly glittering shapes, in among the scattered stones where the wall had been torn asunder.

Delrin fell asleep before Bull had finished the letter.

 

**

 

By two weeks later, aid from neighboring towns had arrived, and Delrin was well enough to depart for Skyhold with the others. He was still stiff and could only ride side-saddle, but further recovery would have to wait for the attention of a skilled mage, possibly even the Inquisitor himself.

On the second day of their journey south, under the chilly sun of late fall, Bull once more brought his mare alongside Delrin’s gelding.

“Tell me about the Templars you lost.”

The demand hit Delrin like a blow to the stomach, leaving him with his mouth open and staring. For several seconds he could find no reply, and his gloved hands gripped the reins tight.

“Or don’t. But you avoid talking about them except when you’re drunk, and it’s eating at you. Might do you some good to tell someone.”

“There’s....” Delrin began, shakily. He swallowed twice, which didn’t help, and then set the reins down on the pommel so he wouldn’t pull at them. “There’s so much wrong,” he admitted at last. The words hurt his throat to say, throat tight with the need to keep them in. “I’m afraid if I start to talk about it, I’ll fall completely apart. And I have to be an example, since I’m one of the few Templars left.”

“We’ve got a long trip ahead of us,” Bull replied in an easy, casual tone, as though inviting breakdown were nothing to him. “Seems as good a time as any to be a mess. And most of the Chargers are walking disasters, they won’t judge.”

“Hey!” said at least two voices from behind them, completely betraying the illusion that no one else was listening to this conversation. Delrin hunched up, mortified, but Bull turned in his saddle and glared at them. The hoofbeats faded away behind them as the others fell back to give them privacy.

Delrin stared at the horizon, at his horse, at the sky, and said nothing.

“Maybe start with telling me about just one,” Bull suggested after a long, cold pause. “I’m pretty sure you won’t actually die if you let yourself think about it.”

Delrin considered the invitation, turning it over in his mind like a very thin flask holding very volatile explosives. The grief was like a physical part of him now, a limb he experienced solely through its pain. The only way he knew how to cope was to ignore it.

Finally, after so long Delrin wondered if Bull had given up, Delrin got the words out.

“The Circles....were a mistake." The words sounded so ugly, so stark. "I knew it for years but never dared say it, not to anyone.” He forced a breath in and out, and a tremor went through the muscles over his ribs. The gelding under him continued its slow, easy walk, rocking him back and forth in his awkward perch on the saddle that hadn’t been designed for this use. The horizon spread huge on all sides, white clouds creeping over the world to the east. “I had a friend who died in the uprisings. I can’t even be angry. He didn’t deserve it, but neither did the mages.”

The great empty space pulled out everything that followed, eating up the sounds as they left Delrin’s lips. With Bull’s patient silence and the just-distant-enough sounds of the Chargers behind them, Delrin could almost imagine he was talking to himself.

When he finished, the sun had dropped further toward the west, he’d wiped his face till it was dry again, and Delrin’s leg and head both ached. But that was all. He hadn’t died, or been struck down by the Maker. And Bull hadn’t left in disgust, either, or indeed given any indication at all that Delrin should do anything but keep talking.

“Good on you for getting some of it out. We got another hour before we should stop for the night,” Bull stated, and then sighed and scratched at the beard he still hadn’t bothered to shave. Delrin turned his head to look, then, neck stiff after hours of looking anywhere but at Bull. Bull met his eyes with his pale green one, face calm, and lifted an eyebrow at Delrin in a silent enquiry. But Delrin just looked away again, embarrassed after such a raw conversation.

Delrin was beginning to suspect Bull had lost his shaving kit and was too proud to admit it. For a while, Delrin occupied himself imagining the feel of the stiff hairs on his own clean-shaven face, until Delrin’s eye caught on Bull’s left hand.

Like everything else about Bull, Delrin had looked at it often. The last two fingers ended after one segment, the rest removed at the knuckles. The scar tissue over the ends shone a glossy silver when light hit it just right.

Not for the first time, Delrin thought about the difficulty of finding a wedding band to fit a finger like that. And also not for the first time, he wondered how Bull had lost the digits. Bull would describe the origins of most of his scars with morbid pride, but the fingers were a topic of mystery and silence. Delrin assumed it had something to do with Seheron.

Mostly Delrin tried not to think about the fact that Bull was a spy and a mercenary. After months spent together in the Inquisition, it was easy to believe they would continue this way together indefinitely. Training and drinking together at Skyhold, spending time surrounded by the Chargers and their particular brand of crazy, fighting side by side in the field. But Delrin knew that he would lose Bull somehow, whether to Bull’s handlers deciding it was time he moved on, or to Corypheus. Or, if they were very unlucky, to an enemy that bested Bull like the despair demon had bested Delrin.

Bull twisted in his saddle to call out over his shoulder, announcing they would stop for the night soon. The early evening sun caught on all his craggy details. In those harsh lines, Delrin saw a spy, a commanding officer, a vicious warrior who fought through injuries that would fell other men, and a man who had literally lost parts of himself along the way. Delrin _knew_ these things about Bull, but often it was easy to take them for granted or lose track of them in the haze of familiarity and longing. The full unfiltered reality of Bull often vanished under his good humor and into imagined kisses and dreamed-of futures.

How much of what Delrin had said today would make its way back to Par Vollen? How many reports had there been that, despite Bull’s promise to Leliana, had never been exposed to the eyes of any _bas_?

“I like to think you understand me when I talk about the Circles,” Delrin said at last, and thought _Maker help me, I’m going to break my own heart on you. Just don’t make me regret it like I regret my time under the Lord Seeker._ “I wish I could understand you better, too. Will you tell me what Seheron was like?”

Bull smiled mirthlessly, and this time _he_ looked away. “Wanna understand me, huh? Well shit. I hope you never understand what Seheron is like, but I’ll tell you about it if you really want to hear.”

Delrin’s heart fluttered under his armor, protesting as he tried to crush the hope out of it.

And Bull started to talk.


	4. All Men Are the Work of Our Maker's Hands

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: this chapter contains strong implications/some discussion of child abuse, specifically of a teen mage. This is based in canon information, so if you can handle that, you can handle this. But mind your needs in reading this chapter.

From a report delivered to Leliana by courier

_The Iron Bull has been made Tal-Vashoth thanks to the Inquisitor, and the potential alliance with the Qun lost. The Bull says the Inquisition need not fear retribution on his behalf, and I hope he is correct. But it should now be considered a certainty that if we do not destroy Corypheus soon, an invasion will occur, as this action has further eroded the Qun’s trust in our capabilities. Our victory at Adamant is currently one of the Inquisition’s only major marks of progress against Corypheus. We must succeed in Val Royeaux or we may have a second war on our hands._

 

**

 

A coded missive delivered by dead drop

_We have long known that the Captain was a smokescreen to cover the presence of more subtle spies. With their cover gone, their behavior may change. Use the new cipher from now on. This is the last time we use this drop site._

 

**

 

Commander Cullen pulled Delrin aside after training. The winter wind bit at them, even in the cradle of Skyhold’s walls, and Cullen’s nose and eyes were both red. The Commander clearly had not slept well for days, and his pale skin always looked worst in the cold. Why the Inquisitor had decided to sleep with this man, even the single time it had apparently occurred, boggled Delrin’s mind.

“Is this about my performance, ser? Because Recruit Taashath will get better if we just allow her the expression of her feelings of frustration. I have already spoken to her about finding more constructive outlets.” Delrin stood his absolute straightest, hands behind his back in parade rest, eyes narrowed. Pre-empting the conversation this way wasn’t exactly insubordination, given that Delrin wasn't exactly a member of the Inquisition's rank and file, but it clearly wasn’t respect, either.

Cullen was a skilled military tactician, Delrin would grant him that much. And Delrin appreciated Cullen’s faith in him, as demonstrated by appointing him temporary head trainer of the Inquisition’s would-be ‘Templar’ troops until such time as the Chargers returned and Delrin returned to field work with them. But Delrin didn’t like the man, and given Cullen’s continued anti-mage sentiments, Delrin never would.

But instead of the disciplinary response Delrin anticipated, Cullen merely looked awkward, mouth pinching tight so that his lips blanched.

“No, Ser Barris, this is not about your performance, which is more than adequate. This is about the Chargers. And the Bull, specifically.”

Delrin, warmed by his exertions with the recruits, suddenly felt all the little nooks and crannies in his armor where the cold crept in. But before he could open his mouth to speak, Cullen held up a hand to pre-empt him.

“They are alive and well. But the Bull and the Inquisitor were on a mission to create an alliance with the Qun, and that mission failed. We lost any potential alliance with the Qun, and the Bull has been made Tal-Vashoth as a result.”

The ground receded below Delrin’s feet, leaving him dizzy and adrift. Gooseflesh rippled over his skin in a wave and Cullen seemed very far away, his words coming as if through a long corridor.

All Delrin could think was _Why didn’t I know about this? They left so soon after returning to Skyhold from Ansburg, but why didn’t I know? Why didn’t he tell me? Why didn’t anyone tell me?_

It took Delrin several seconds to figure out how to work his vocal cords, which seemed to have sealed shut. “May I ask what happened at the Storm Coast, sir?” he croaked.

Cullen described the events in brief, but it was enough for Delrin to infer exactly how it had transpired. As a Vashoth born of Tal-Vashoth parents, the Inquisitor had no love for Qunari or the Qun, a fact that had been widely publicized in an attempt to legitimize his status as the Herald of Andraste. That he had even entertained the notion of an alliance was the real surprise. It was easy to infer how losing the alliance rather than the Chargers would have been vastly preferable to him, and thus why he would have instructed Bull to disobey his orders from the Qunari liaison.

“The Inquisitor asked me to inform you since you are a particular friend of the Bull’s. But I am also telling you so that you will be prepared for your next mission with the Chargers. Josephine has received word from Jader that Templar services are needed there, so when the Chargers return later this week, you’re to depart Skyhold with them immediately after they restock and change mounts. The only reason they’re returning here at all is that they are the Inquisitor’s escort.”

“Neither Bull nor I will be at the Winter Palace, then,” Delrin managed in response to this, and was proud of how steady the words sounded.

“No, Ser Barris. Details of your upcoming mission will be delivered to your private quarters tonight. Dismissed.”

Delrin saluted, but couldn’t even feel the metal of his breastplate as he pressed his hand against it.

His squad of recruits filed in clusters toward one of the inlets to the warren of rooms and passages under Skyhold. The barracks and mess hall were both down there, to keep the troops fed and housed away from the castle above-ground where the aristocracy and other visitors were hosted. But though Delrin had been hungry moments before, he turned away from the others, numb feet carrying him to the garden and from there to the chapel.

Two others were already present in the little room, but Delrin had no eyes for anything but the statue of Andraste. He knelt on one of the leather pads left here for the purpose, gripped his hands together in his lap, and looked into the carved marble face.

 _Bride of the Maker, blessed Andraste,_ he began, _The man I love might finally be able to love me back--_

Delrin stopped himself. Forced a breath deep enough that his belly pressed against the inside of his armor, then counted out the exhale. His thoughts tumbled together in a whirl, discordant and frantic. His heart sped and an ache radiated from his breastbone where subtle muscles tensed and would not let go.

 _Andraste, please let me have him--_ Delrin stopped himself again, squeezing his eyes shut in sheer frustration. _Sorry, no, that’s even worse._ He counted his breaths until he felt more like himself and less like his body was a distant puppet held by a storm of voices.

Andraste’s face remained in the same soft, frozen expression she always wore, but he felt that she was laughing at him. _Perhaps Bull understands you better than I,_ Delrin admitted to himself. _He gave up his eye in protection of a man he’d just met, and now he has given up his homeland and identity to protect the family he made for himself. He deserves the same selflessness in return. But can I give it?_ Delrin imagined himself in the Inquisitor’s place, having to help Bull make that decision, and shivered with horror, the leather of his gloves creaking has he clenched his hands together. _Thank you, Maker, for keeping that choice from me. I know the choices I am capable of making, and that is not a duty I know how to fulfill._

 _Breathe,_ he reminded himself.

 _Beloved One,_ Delrin began for the third time. _Show me how to support my friend in his....crisis of faith?....His time of need. Please help me not turn his pain and loss into an excuse for my lust. Teach me to love unselfishly._  

_Andraste please, this is so hard and I want him so much, please help me not act in a way that will shame me or offend him--_

Delrin’s feelings hadn’t ruined the friendship, a fact he had relied upon for comfort for a long time now. As Krem and the other Chargers had recently told him when Bull was out of earshot, even a blind idiot couldn’t miss the fact that Delrin wanted the Chief. That was mortifying to hear, but the Bull was only half-blind and nothing like an idiot. Which meant that Bull knew, and had known for a long time now, and it was up to him (not Delrin) to make a decision about it now. But oh, how Delrin wanted to ask when Bull returned, ask and be told _yes_.

Delrin blinked up at the tall figure with her hands stretched toward the sky as though she were waiting to receive into her palms the aid he begged of her now. Andraste had gone to her pyre for her love, so surely Delrin could learn to let go of his own desires in this small way? _You live it,_ Bull had said, but Delrin wasn’t sure he know how to live by Andraste’s example in this.

 _Maybe the Qun is right,_ he thought at last, _and all love is selfish and a distraction from our purpose._ Delrin couldn’t really make himself believe it, not with the figure of the Maker’s bride before him, but he couldn’t deny that there was a certain logic to the Qun’s guidance in this respect. Delrin felt very selfish and very distracted from his duty.

 _Teach me to love unselfishly,_ Delrin repeated again, and then again and again until his eyes pricked with tears he refused to shed and his knees bruised against the inside of his armor.

 

**

 

The Chargers returned without fanfare, any attention the returning party got instead focused upon the Inquisitor. The sun had just set, leaving the inside of Skyhold in shadow as the Inquisitor dismounted from his colossal steed. Delrin wasn’t the only one waiting, and Dorian stood by his side, clutching anxiously at his staff. Every aspect of his face and hair and makeup was perfect.

Which was ironic, since as soon as the Inquisitor dismounted, he rushed over to Dorian, swept him off his feet, and kissed him so passionately that Dorian would be lucky to even have a mustache by the end of it, much less a tidy one. It had been more than two weeks since they’d seen one another, an unusual length of separation for them. As always, Delrin tried not to envy the couple and their clear attachment to one another, failed, and prayed silently for strength.

Head and shoulders taller than anyone else around him, Bull stood out among the Chargers as he always did. In light of what had just transpired, it was even more obvious than usual that Bull had avoided recruiting any Vashoth or Tal-Vashoth for his company.

When Delrin approached the group, Bull’s eye picked him out immediately and his face broke into a warm smile. Delrin’s heart skipped, guts cramping up tight around the dinner in his belly as simultaneous desire and shame filled every available space in him. 

“Del! Just the man we wanted to see. No use riding at night, so we’re leaving tomorrow morning,” Bull called.

As Delrin got close enough to make out his actions in the rapidly fading light, he saw that Bull was sorting through his saddlebags and had several items tucked into the crook of his elbow. The final object he removed before letting the leather flap fall back into place was the small jar in which he kept his horn balm. Delrin felt a warm pang in his chest and a twitch in his breeches at the sight of it, mind automatically conjuring the memory of its sharp scent. Maker, how he loved that smell, and loved the sight of Bull rubbing it into the tough skin at the base of his horns, fingers slippery and glistening. It had been a struggle to keep from offering to help Bull with it during all the evenings they’d spent together on the road. Presumably, Bull had now run through his supply while getting to and from the Storm Coast, and wanted to refill it from the larger container in his room before leaving again.

“What’s this trip to Jader about?” Bull inquired, his tone as jovial as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened on the coast. “We didn’t get much detail in the little scrap of paper the raven brought, just that we’d be expected to leave again right away.”

 _He has to be upset,_ Delrin thought. He wasn’t sure how he’d expected Bull to act, but he had expected there to be….something. Some sign of shock or distress, some indication of what Bull thought about the complete reversal of his life’s purpose, _something_ other than Bull’s usual joviality.

But now Delrin was here with him, shivering in the freezing night air that Bull didn’t seem to feel at all, he was no longer sure why he was surprised. _That’s just his Qunari issues,_ Krem had said. _Thinks he’s supposed to be all stoic and put-together._ Bull wasn’t stoic, perhaps, but a smile could hide feelings just as well as the stereotypical Qunari blank face.

Delrin didn’t know how to respond to this, though. If there had been any trace of need, he could have inquired after Bull’s feelings, or offered support in some way. Instead there was _this,_ the vulnerability they’d shared on the road from Ansburg gone as though it had never existed.

So Delrin squared his shoulders and answered the question, playing along. “More Templar work. No demon involvement that we know of so far, but we’ve got very little actual information. Just rumors in Jader about a young man people are saying is an abomination. We’re to investigate and apprehend him if possible.”

“So it could be just some kid everyone hates with us being sent out as extremely expensive nannies, or it could be a freakshow mind-controlling people and summoning demons.”

A smile crept onto Delrin’s face. “That about sums it up, yes.”

Then Delrin noticed another item Bull held. If Bull had access to saddlebags while traveling, then he carried paper, ink, sealing wax, an enchanted lighter to melt it, a pen, and several spare nibs, all held in a neat little wood case that doubled as a writing surface. It had been a very pointed gift from Josephine when the Chargers had joined the Inquisition, a sign that Bull was both welcomed and watched. The tools of his trade, Bull called them, the means with which he wrote his letters to his handlers. The case sat cradled against Bull’s chest, half-concealed by a pair of Bull’s pants with an obvious rip in them, the top edge of the case digging into the soft flesh beside Bull’s nipple.

Because Bull wouldn’t need the tools of that trade anymore, would he.

Delrin glanced over at Krem, who stood partially behind Bull. Krem looked pointedly at the writing case and then shot Delrin a look that silently communicated, _Yikes, yes I know._ By his side, Stitches grimaced and shook his head, joining in the silent acknowledgement that All Was Not Well.

“The quartermaster was informed of your return, and has assembled all the supplies you will need into a marked crate in his office,” Delrin told them, determined now to speak to Krem in private if Bull continued to pretend nothing was wrong.

“By this time in the evening, Eustace is usually making eyes at someone in the Rest without ever managing to do anything about it,” Bull replied, and then gestured to the cluster of stablehands waiting patiently at the edges of the group. One stepped forward to take the dray. “Convenient, I was headed through there anyway.”

“I’ll come with you,” Delrin offered, anxious to stay by Bull’s side, though Bull clearly didn’t need him. Bull didn’t refuse, though, so when Bull peeled away from the Chargers to head toward the tavern, Delrin followed.

Bull inquired after Delrin’s training of the troops as they walked, and Delrin answered honestly, all the while feeling the unacknowledged change hanging between them. _You’re not a Qunari anymore,_ he kept thinking. _There’s nothing stopping me from just asking, except--_

Except that Bull might say no, and now wasn’t the time. It was difficult to remember all the fervent prayers of the last week when faced with the size of Bull, the familiar smell of him, the low timbre of his voice and the faint clank of his ankle brace. And the fact that, as always, Bull seemed fine.

Bull waved to the barkeep and several patrons as he took the stairs to his room on the ramparts. Delrin tried not to watch Bull’s ass as they climbed, and Delrin failed. Even when he didn’t look, he heard the way the wooden steps creaked under Bull’s weight, and all Delrin could think of was the way Bull would feel on top of him, those big hips and that thick waist spreading his thighs--

Bull grabbed a torch from the top floor of the bar, carrying it into his room and hooking it into the a holster beside the door, where it fitfully illuminated the space.

The ceiling and walls of Bull’s room had been repaired at some point, but Delrin remembered the fallen timbers that had half-filled the space when they’d arrived. He’d helped Bull clear them and clean the room for want of anything else to do before submitting himself to Cullen for assignment.

Now, Bull set his armful of things onto his desk, back to Delrin. The writing case got pushed into the corner beside the wall and the trousers spread on top of it as though hiding it from sight. The trousers were not only torn but bloodstained as well, Delrin now saw. The way Bull fought often destroyed his clothes, which was why he only really wore one outfit. Its construction was simple, using the same pattern every time, which made it easier for Krem to remake. He kept the paper pattern pieces tucked into a little leather satchel in his bag, and Bull paid him extra for his tailoring services.

“So I assume you heard,” Bull remarked, interrupting Delrin’s imagining of the fight that had damaged those pants.

“About what happened on the coast? Yes,” Delrin answered, his voice shaking a little. Were they discussing Bull’s excommunication now? Had Bull just wanted privacy in order to bring it up?

But Bull merely nodded, fetching his big jar of horn balm from where he kept it at his bedside. He popped its seal and scooped some out on his fingers and into his traveling jar, packing it into the space.

Delrin couldn’t help but push. “I’m very sorry for what happened. I know how it is to….leave the organization you’ve devoted yourself to.”

But Bull laughed, snapping the round little pot shut now that it was full. Turning, he lifted his greasy hand to spread the extra on his fingers onto the base of one horn, and he smiled, all easy carelessness as he met Delrin’s questioning gaze.

“It’s fine. I get to follow your example now, and you came out all right.”

Delrin recoiled from this compliment, turning away to look at the door. What was _he_ an example of? Waiting far too long before acknowledging the severity of the problem, and then almost killing himself to get out just before it would have been too late?

Delrin remembered waking up for what had felt like the first time in weeks to find himself in an unknown man’s tent. He hadn’t even known Bull was a Qunari then, just a deep, gentle voice in the darkness whose breathing lulled Delrin to restfulness. Bull had been kind to him, cautiously welcoming to the half-dead stranger whose clothes stank with hardship and whose breath was full of lyrium.

“You took me in when I came to the Inquisition,” Delrin murmured, still embarrassed by the memories. “Kept me alive till we got to Skyhold, and then let me spar with you and your men and gave me things to occupy me until the Inquisition did. You’ve been a friend to me when I needed it. What can I do for you, now?”

He heard Bull sigh, and then Bull crossed the room to stand beside Delrin, who stopped breathing when Bull wrapped each of his shoulders in one big hand.

“Nothing, Del. Let me have this, okay? This needs to be mine.”

The rejection cut deep, and Delrin would have withdrawn from the room if he hadn’t been literally held in place. “Is there nothing I can offer you, then?” he bit out, hands gripping into fists at the hem of his jacket, voice quiet in the still room. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Bull smile.

“Come get dinner with me in the kitchens, and then help me watch out for the Chargers when they inevitably get drunk tonight after they pick up our supplies. Then tomorrow morning, you can help me corral them all onto horses while they’re hungover.”

Lacking any other options, Delrin did as instructed. The cooks were all well-acquainted with Bull, and he’d clearly slept with at least one of them. Delrin was used to accepting the great variety of Bull’s bedmates, none of whom had ever been him, and ignored it with practiced ease. Sure, it stung, it always did, but what was a little pain? So Delrin peeled himself out of his woolen layers and ate dinner with Bull to one side of the baking-hot room, listening to the chatter of the cooks and the servants bringing dinners to the nobility upstairs. When Bull was at last fed--Delrin always finished before him, because Bull ate so much more--they left for the tavern.

A cook had given Delrin two glasses of an excellent wine with dinner, and Delrin had drunk them gladly, anticipating the warm easiness that would come from them. He ordered a third glass from Cabot, and took it with him to the corner where the Chargers--and Delrin himself, now--often gathered.

The space was crowded tonight, possibly because the cold drew people to warm themselves with alcohol and by the fire. A good portion of the crowd was the Inquisitor’s old mercenary company, the Valo-kas, who had arrived two days ago. There were many Vashoth and Tal-Vashoth in the Inquisition now, drawn by the Inquisitor’s presence and searching for somewhere safe and welcoming. But the Valo-kas were still exceptional given their personal connection to the Inquisitor himself, and the keep had been buzzing with talk of them.

Bull had been uncomfortable with the presence of so many Tal-Vashoth before, and Delrin wondered what he thought of them now he was one.

“Tell me about Andraste and the Maker,” Bull suddenly demanded, interrupting Delrin’s train of thought. He blinked up at Bull in confusion. “How do you love a god? Because in my experience, it’s the little personal things that make you love someone. The weird specific shit they do day to day.”

The thought of Bull loving someone sent a pang through Delrin’s chest, but he pushed it away. It was habit, now, ingrained like the right way to hold a sword.

“The little things?” he prompted, encouraging Bull to explain the rest of his thought. It also kept him from having to construct an answer on the spot, startled as he was by the unprovoked inquiry.

“Yeah. Take you, for example. If someone loved you,” Bull began, and Delrin froze on the hard wood of the bench. _Andraste give me strength,_ Delrin thought helplessly, _to have this conversation with him. Let me not walk upon the paths of temptation and do something idiotic to him in public._  “They would love the little things about you. Like the way one of your cheeks dimples up when you smile but not the other.”

Delrin raised a hand to the left side of his face, where he knew he did indeed form a dimple when he grinned. He’d always been self-conscious about it, seen it as a sign that his face was imperfect and asymmetrical. Did Bull like that? Or was this just a rhetorical device in some argument?

“Your devotion to your family and your cause,” Bull continued, his smile obvious in his voice as though he were teasing now, “even though both are hard to deal with.”

Delrin dropped his gaze and his hand to the table again, remembering his brother’s letters mocking him for his crush on a Qunari, and his father’s stern disapproval of it when Corram had told him despite Delrin’s wishes. 'Do not let him lead you astray from your faith,' Father had written. _Well, here I am discussing faith with him,_ Delrin thought, _and he’s no longer a Qunari._

“Your preference for wine over beer,” Bull went on, leaning a little closer, “which is decidedly un-Fereldan of you, but also the way you wax eloquent about how to pair Fereldan cheeses with that wine.”

At this, Delrin’s face curved into a crooked one-sided smile, remembering that he’d requested cheese with wine at dinner in Val Colline, and described to Bull how to select appropriate flavor profiles for both. Delrin had learned the skill as a young Templar, visiting his family while investigating local reports of apostasy. Delrin hadn’t thought the conversation would be anything other than boring and forgettable to Bull, but apparently he’d been wrong.

“The way you’re scared of horses because you were clearly thrown a few times as a child, but you ride anyway because you have to.”

Blood flushed hot to Delrin’s cheeks at this; he had hoped his issues with horses wouldn’t be that obvious. In embarrassment he pulled his thighs together, moving his right one away from where it touched Bull’s. It occurred to Delrin then that Bull had gestured Delrin to sit at his left tonight--in Bull’s blind spot.

“Aww, don’t get embarrassed," Bull admonished. "Because y’know what else someone might love about you? The fact that you actually believe in the Inquisitor and admire his relationship with Dorian. Unlike most people, who think they’re a bad match doomed to bring the Inquisitor to disgrace, you think they’re sweet together.”

“They are,” Delrin protested, hot all over and regretting the wine he’d already drunk. He felt it in his belly and dug the pads of his fingers into base of his cup before taking another helpless sip, uncertain of what else to do. “Dorian talks a lot of nonsense, but that’s just because he’s afraid he can’t be loved. Just like I’m afraid of horses,” Delrin joked, wishing he could sink through the floor. _Someone Dorian loved threw him off when he was young, just like my father’s horse threw me. It’s written all over him._

“You noticed that, huh?” Bull chuckled. The homey scent of the beer he drank wafted warm over Delrin, who suppressed a shiver of desire at having Bull close enough to feel and smell his breath. It didn’t mean anything, it never did, because Bull was always like this with people. Even now it didn’t mean anything, because Bull was nothing if not direct, so if he’d wanted Delrin he would have said.

“The Inquisitor really loves him,” Delrin hedged. “He’s hardly shy about it.” Delrin had heard all about Mother Giselle’s attempted separation of the two, and the Inquisitor’s ensuing crusade to make Dorian the most-kissed man in Skyhold. So far, at least, the endeavor seemed to be going well.

“Yeah,” Bull agreed, voice soft and fond but with just a hint of laughter to it, barely audible over the din of the tavern. “But my point is, how do you love a god? How do you love someone so _beyond_ you, whose life is nothing like yours, and whose experience you cannot begin to understand? There’s no common ground, and there’s no stupid little personal details to fix on. Unless you believe the Maker has human qualities like obsessively folding his holy socks in heaven, and Andraste loves him for things like that.”

Delrin couldn’t help laughing at the sweet--and slightly blasphemous--mental image. Across the tavern, other Chargers had drifted to where a cluster of the Valo-kas were settled in. Krem was making eyes at one of the shorter ones, a stocky muscular woman whose nipples were the same grey-black as Bull’s and twice as prominent. Delrin began to make a mental countdown till Krem made a fool of himself in front of her, and she either dismissed him or took him to bed because of it. It gave Delrin something to focus on instead of his own boundless embarrassment and foolishness.

“Maybe she does, and I just don’t know,” Delrin admitted. “But the general wisdom is that it’s not the same kind of love. The Maker is....bigger than that? Beyond small personal things.”

“Except he’s not,” Bull countered. “He falls in love, just like people do. He feels angry and betrayed by his children, just like people do. He abandons those depending on him, just like people do. He’s a very _human_ figure.”

For a moment Delrin’s hackles rose, ready to spring to the defense of his faith, and his father’s words jumped into his throat. But then Delrin forced himself to relax, because this was just Bull and he was trying to understand, not to attack. That wasn’t his way.

So Delrin shrugged, taking another mouthful of wine. “Very un-Qunari, you mean?” he asked, and nudged his elbow into Bull’s ribs.

Bull grinned, letting out a chuckle. “Well yeah,” he admitted after a brief pause. “If this is all going to some divine plan, this is a shitty plan.”

“‘There is no chaos in the world, only complexity,’” Delrin quoted. As soon as he’d said it, though, Delrin felt Bull tense up beside him, and then wanted to punch himself in the face for being insensitive. “Oh no, I’m so sorry Bull, I didn’t mean--I didn’t think--”

But Bull just laughed again, laying his enormous left hand down on Delrin’s thigh. The two partially missing fingers felt strange pressing into the muscle there.

“No, don’t get worked up. I pushed, and you pushed back. That’s fair.”

“But I don't _want_ to push you,” Delrin denied, and stared at the hand on his leg. Then in a moment of pure bold stupidity (and maybe the effects of the wine), he curled his own right hand around the grey wrist, letting his hand rest soft atop Bull’s. “I only meant that I have thought often about those words, and found them meaningful. Probably I’m misunderstanding their real intent, but I think they’re applicable to the Andrastian faith. Some people think that the Maker has abandoned us, but just as often, we try to see His hand in things that happen--which means He cannot have left, or that His intent is played out even now, in His absence. And if He’s watching, or if this is as He intends, then there is no chaos, there is only complexity beyond what we can understand from our limited perspective. We are each in our intended place, doing what we are meant to do.”

“Even the arseholes? Even the ‘Vints?” Bull pushed, and Delrin made himself relax, again, stroking his thumb over the soft veins on the back of Bull’s hand without really thinking about it. Muscle by muscle, Delrin let go of the clench of defensiveness, relaxing back into the stone wall and the wood bench and the feel of Bull’s skin, softer than it had any right to be.

“Yeah, maybe even them. The Maker made them, so why shouldn’t they be serving His purposes?” It was a question Delrin had asked himself many times over the years. Why would the Maker love _anyone_ , since all people were sinners and imperfect? Or, if He loved any of them, how could He stop there and not love _all?_  Was there truly some quantity or type of sin that was too much? There were actions that _Delrin_ could not and would never forgive, but he was not a god. Could such human limits be put on a being that created the world? Or was even the Maker too human to love unconditionally?

The wine and Bull’s proximity and the raucous delight of the Valo-kas and the Chargers and all the other tavern-goers mixed together into a wall of sensation and noise and light, complicated and beautiful and mundane all at once. Delrin blinked at the room, and then turned to look up at Bull.

He rarely got to look at Bull’s face from this distance without Bull staring back at him. It was one thing to look Bull in the eye when Bull was looking back, because that was merely polite. But to really allow himself to really _look_ at the bigger man....

Bull murmured something in Qunlat. Delrin thought about asking for a translation, but didn’t. If Bull had wanted him to know what it meant, he would have explained it already.

“Maybe it’s all horseshit,” Delrin admitted, “and the Maker doesn’t exist, and heaven is as empty as Corypheus said. But I find comfort in believing the Maker is waiting for me when I die, to tell me I lived a good life overall, and I think that’s worth something. Even if the Maker is nothing more than me giving myself motivation to do good, at least He’s that.”

Bull laughed again, and squeezed Delrin’s right thigh, long fingers wrapping around to the inside and pressing into the tender skin there. In that moment, thinking of the Maker, Delrin didn’t feel overwhelmed by the touch and the situation and just smiled, rubbing again over those soft, bulging veins and the hard tendons and bone underneath.

“Fair enough,” Bull said. “In you, faith is a good quality. I shouldn’t give you shit about it.”

“You think?” Delrin smiled, and relaxed against the wall, for once at ease. He realized then that he could even tease _back_. “Maybe the Maker sent you to test me, so you’re just doing exactly what He intended you should. You haven’t shaken my faith yet, so maybe you should even try harder.”

This got another slow laugh and thigh squeeze from Bull, and Delrin’s breath caught in his throat. If the hand moved just a little higher, Bull could--

“It’s not that I don’t get Andrastianism,” Bull interrupted Delrin’s thoughts. “Or even Andraste and the Maker, and the way that kind of love could be different from the selfish kinds of love the rest of us get. I have a lot of experience in devoting myself to something greater, body and mind, while knowing that thing to be beyond what I could ever really understand.” Bull let out a sarcastic snort. “I guess in the end it found me wanting, just like the Maker and all of you.”

The creeping horror of those words slithered into Delrin’s chest and ate his breath, leaving him frozen. For several long seconds he stared out into the busy tavern, with its laughter and smells of spilled ale, and it felt terribly wrong that everyone else should be enjoying themselves after Bull had said something like that. _I’m a little too tipsy for this,_ Delrin thought, as tears prickled in the corners of his eyes.

So Delrin pushed his cup away with his left hand and then forced himself to inhale, and he stared up at the ceiling, blinking to calm himself. Then, one bit at a time, Delrin leaned himself against Bull’s shoulder.

Bull’s skin was, as always, warm to the touch. The ridge of a scar that hadn’t healed well pressed into Delrin’s cheek as he fitted Bull’s elbow in the space between his chest and side. He felt rather than saw Bull turn his head to look down at him.

“If there is a place at the Maker’s side for any of us, there’s a place for you,” Delrin murmured, half-hoping Bull wouldn’t hear. It was the wrong thing to say, Delrin knew it even before it left his mouth, but he didn’t know how else to offer comfort for something like this.

Bull said nothing, but his hand clutched tight on Delrin’s thigh, and didn’t let go for a long time.

 

**

 

The next morning arrived cold and clear, icy winds tearing down the mountain at their backs. The Inquisition had only grown more prosperous, so they were wrapped in layers of wool and leather, muffled against the world. In deference to the weather, even Bull had at last donned a leather vest and gloves and wrapped a long scarf around his horns and bare scalp. But his arms were still bare down to his wrists.

Bull’s genial mask didn’t hold up as well on longer exposure. As the days passed, he never gave off any overt signs of sadness or anger, but he was quiet and pensive, staring out over the brown winter plains of Fereldan as they spread out below to the east. Conversations Delrin attempted to start with Bull ended after a few sentences, and Delrin exchanged concerned glances and whispered conversations with Krem and Stitches. Stitches was of the opinion that Bull was an idiot who had no idea how to take care of himself, while Krem disagreed and thought Bull just needed time to sort himself out and should be left alone.

The first day, Delrin tried to be respectful. Perhaps he had pushed too hard the night before in the Herald’s Rest. Perhaps he had been selfish or needy.

The second say, Delrin grew irritated. He had liked the open playfulness of their discussion about Andraste and the Maker and he had liked the vulnerability. And most of all, he had liked the hand on his thigh and the hope that Bull might actually want him in return.

On the third day, Delrin saw too much of himself in Bull--the same stoic resolve, the same terror of weakness and disintegration, the same need to be an example. So on the third day of their path to Jader, Delrin rode up to Bull where he led the party.

“I’m pretty sure you won’t actually die if you let yourself talk about it,” he informed Bull. For a brief second this earned him a smile and a look from that one green eye, but then the expression fell away again.

“You’re right, I won’t,” Bull replied, and then said nothing more. Just returned his gaze to the horizon and went right on riding in silence as though Delrin had said nothing.

Delrin waited perhaps a quarter of an hour, just to see if Bull would offer anything on his own, and then sighed. “Look. I know you don’t want to talk about it. But neither the Chargers nor I are stupid, and we know you have an opinion about what happened on the Coast. I didn’t want to talk about the Templars, either, but you pushed me, and I felt better. I felt closer to you. So I have to wonder if maybe it wouldn’t be better if I pushed you.”

But Bull merely snorted. “I’m not containing myself for you or my boys, though. I’m doing it for _me_.”

Staring at Bull, Delrin's brow wrinkled in confusion. “Why?”

“Qunari go mad when they leave the Qun,” Bull said simply, and Delrin blinked. Whatever he’d expected Bull to say, it hadn’t been that--and yet now it was said, he didn’t know why he’d expected anything else. “I know you think it’s horseshit, but that’s because you’ve only seen the kind of Tal-Vashoth who’d join the Inquisition. And you didn’t know me in Seheron.”

“You’re right, I didn’t,” Delrin admitted, voice quiet. He wanted to reach out to touch Bull’s hand, demonstrate the tenderness Bull deserved. “But I know you _now_ , and so do your men. Do you honestly think I would trust someone who would brutalize the innocent and defenseless?”

Bull’s face remained impassive and he didn’t even spare Delrin a glance. “You already did. That’s why you came late to the Inquisition.”

The words pierced Delrin like a knife, slipping in between his ribs and stabbing into all the soft, frightened parts of him. Blood hammered through his skull and under the thin skin of his wrists, leaving his palms sweaty and his eyes prickling.

“How _dare_ you,” he breathed, and could think of nothing else to say. Was _that_ really what Bull thought of him, that he was a credulous, naive fool? Was _that_ why Bull had never reciprocated? “I know you're hurting, but there is no call for you to--”

At this, Bull swung his eye over to Delrin and stared down at him from his much bigger mount.

“You still don’t even know, do you,” Bull sighed, looking at Delrin as though he were exhausted by the conversation. It was an expression of such condescension that Delrin’s skin burned under his clothes, jaw squeezing tight till his teeth hurt. “You think you can read people? You didn’t even leave the Templars on your own! When you came to Haven, you were with a spirit called Cole--or possibly a demon, depending on how one views these things. He can make people forget him after they see or talk to him, and he made you forget because he didn’t think you’d be able to cope with the truth. Cole told us he had to spend weeks convincing you to get out before the Lord Seeker and his men killed you as planned. Nobody can figure out how Cole made himself look like a human but he did, and _he_ brought you to us.”

Delrin felt as though the world had reversed itself, the ground beneath him turning over to dump him into the sky. His head spun and everything but Bull receded away as Delrin stared, shaking.

“Why are you doing this?” he hissed. “Of all the things to lie to me about--”

“It’s not a lie,” Bull persisted, his voice and face still unruffled. “Most of the Chargers know Cole, he hangs around the top floor of the Herald’s Rest most evenings and he comes down when you’re not around. Ask any of them to confirm that he exists, they’ll tell you.”

Delrin couldn’t tear his eyes away from Bull now. Silently he begged Bull to recant, or even to laugh and say it was a joke. But Bull did neither of those things. Instead, he sighed, looking bored.

“It’s sweet how you think you know me, but you don’t. You think the bloodthirsty killer I am when I fight isn’t me somehow? It is. You think the liar who worked as a spy for years isn’t me? It is. I manipulate people and I kill for pleasure and I’m very good at both.” Delrin at last managed to wrench his stiff neck around so that he faced front, not looking anywhere near Bull. He instead focused his gaze upon the pommel of his saddle, watching it move back and forth, back and forth as his gelding walked. “You really want to know what I’ve been thinking the last few days? I’ve been wishing that the re-educators--my _fellow Ben-Hassrath_ \--would come for me. Take me away from this and make me a proper Qunari again like they did the first time. I went to them after Seheron, did I tell you that? I was so _crazed_ that I wanted to kill just about everyone I saw and then kill myself to finish the job. But I was a good asset and they didn’t want to waste me, so they fixed my mind and found a new job for me out here in the South. I’ve never in my whole life felt as good as I did after they finished with me. I had a purpose, and I was right with the world. I want that again.”

“I can’t--” Delrin choked out, and then didn’t bother to finish his sentence. He pulled on the reins and clicked his tongue till his horse turned trotted down the line to the end. Several people called out to him as he passed but he ignored the words. And while a few turned to make sure he wasn’t leaving the party altogether, no one came after him.

Delrin had experienced.... _dreams,_ starting in Therinfal and continuing through his withdrawals from lyrium. Dreams of bright blue eyes looking through him in the darkness and a soft voice against his ear. The invention of a demon called Cole was such a ridiculous falsehood, and yet....Delrin knew that Bull wasn’t a fool. Why would he lie about something so nonsensical if Delrin could easily disprove it? What _would_ the other Chargers tell him if he asked?

Something frightened in the back of Delrin’s churning mind told him they would not contradict Bull’s story.

And as for the rest--

“Oh Maker, hear my cry,” Delrin whispered, digging the knuckle of one thumb into the edges of his breastbone, trying to force himself to be able to breathe again. But his clothes were so thick he could barely feel it, barely feel anything at all. “Guide me through the blackest nights. Steel my heart against the temptations of the wicked. Make me to rest in the warmest places....”

The words flowed out in halting recitation, until Delrin had run through the whole of Transfigurations three times. It would have been greater comfort to stand in a choir and sing it as it was meant to be heard, to raise his voice in praise and supplication as he had done with the Order. But spoken words were all he had left, now, the choirs of his youth long gone.

Finally, Delrin steeled himself and rode up into the group again, searching out the slim shape of Skinner on her dracolisk. The dracolisk didn’t like Delrin any more than its rider did, but at least this time it didn’t try to bite his horse. Around him, various conversations went quiet, and he felt several eyes glance at him.

“Skinner, do you know a boy named Cole?” he asked, voice forcibly neutral.

She wrinkled her nose at him, looking offended by the question.

“Of course I know him, weird little bastard. What is it to you?”

In the moment after those words, it felt as though Delrin’s skin were trying to crawl off his body. Skinner was many things, but a liar or a practical joker were not among them.

“I, uh, nothing,” he stumbled. “I was just….wondering about him. I don’t know him very well.”

“The Chief doesn’t want to sleep with him, if that’s what’s got your panties in a twist,” Rocky interjected. The three Chargers riding near enough to hear this all voiced their agreement. The next quarter of an hour was filled with stories about weird things the Chargers had known Cole to say or do, or which they had heard from others, clearly provided under the mistaken impression that Delrin thought Cole might be a competitor for Bull’s attention.

Delrin felt as though he were slowly dying, regaled with stories about the creature who had apparently rescued him from Therinfal and yet was completely unknown to Delrin.

He clearly didn’t even know the man whom he'd thought was his best friend. What _else_ didn’t he know? 

 

**

 

The next day Delrin avoided Bull, who made no effort to approach him. If any of the Chargers had failed to notice the rift on the prior day, they all knew by mid-morning, and unease spread through the ranks.

Delrin’s gelding noticed his distress as soon as he mounted in the morning, turning its ears back and shuffling in discomfort as he settled himself into the saddle. But it carried him nonetheless.

The day passed in relative quiet compared to most days with the Chargers. Skinner still dismounted to piss on or vandalize every signpost they passed, but that was just life as usual. Delrin had long since learned to just keep riding and not look if they went by anything that pointed the way.

And Delrin himself stewed, angry and silent. He turned yesterday’s conversation and his journey to Haven over and over again in his head, trying to make sense of what had happened. He grew enraged at Bull and then at himself in turns. He composed a hundred letters in his head in which he excoriated Bull to Corram, and then another hundred in which he admitted he wasn’t worthy. He grew afraid of Bull one moment, and disgusted by him the next, and then wanted him with even greater ardor than before.

Thankfully they reached Jader by evening, coming upon the city’s outskirts and following their directions to the house of the local lord, who was holding the young man for Delrin’s inspection.

The closer they got to their destination, however, the more aware Delrin became of the sounds of a mob. He’d heard that babble of raised voices and ugly words before in other towns and cities. And this one had already reached a state of pounding objects and chanting. The horses shied, ears turning back, until Krem’s horse outright refused to go any further.

Awkwardness and discomfort swept away by logistics, Delrin rode to the front and shared a concerned look with Bull.

“Stitches, please tie the horses,” Delrin called as he dismounted. He looped the reins around a nearby door latch, but it wouldn’t hold if the horse pulled, and Maker protect anyone who opened the door and got a faceful of angry horse. Out of the corner of his eye Delrin saw Bull dismount too, but Delrin was already unhooking his shield from the saddle and running down the street.

When he turned the final corner, the street opened out onto a field, and at the end of a gravel road, a large two-storey house sprawled in the midst of a manicured stand of trees. The more salient feature of the landscape, however, was the crowd around the house’s walls.

It consisted of some forty people, shouting and beating sticks and scythes and brooms against the walls of the house and even upon the glass of the windows. One had already shattered, and while no one had yet climbed inside, it was clearly next on the crowd’s agenda. Through the broken glass several of the household’s servants could be seen, obvious in their livery, looking frightened and holding fire-irons.

“Ho there!” Delrin called, raising his voice, but no one paid him any mind, as he was barely audible over the din. He tried again, and got two of the closest people to turn toward him mostly because they heard the clanking of his armor and were curious what the sound was. But by then the house’s doors were already opening inward, either the lock broken or at last released from inside.

“There he is!” someone called, and the crowd immediately moved forward in a rush.

Delrin pushed into the back of the group, using the force of his strength to shove people aside if they would not move. Angry ripples of response went up around him, and Delrin began his own shout in response.

“Templar, make way! I am a Templar, let me pass!”

He finally broke through the front into a ring of space by the doors, in which three people stood over a brown boy. A blond man had the slender figure by the nape and shook him viciously. Delrin didn’t bother to listen to the words, instead raising his shield and stepping directly between the man and the child, digging the edge of the metal into the man’s forearm. The glare he threw at Delrin was one of pure rage, middle-aged face distorted into an expression that reminded Delrin of some of the demons he’d fought.

“I am a Templar!” he stated, loud in the sudden murmurs of shock as they saw and recognized the insignia on his shield and armor. In his peripheral vision, Delrin saw Bull wading through the crowd as though through tall grass, horns glistening in the torchlight. Delrin fumbled behind him for the boy’s shoulders, pulling him close and backing them both toward the wall of the house. “You _will_ step aside and let me perform my duties!”

“I’ll kill him, he’s an abomination!” spat the blond man, who was clearly some sort of ringleader. Standing this close, Delrin could smell the ale on his breath and see the details of his bloodshot eyes.

“And I am a Templar!” Delrin repeated, just as loud, grateful for the helmet and gloves and scarf that hid his face and body from that vicious stare. The thin shoulders under his right hand shook, and Delrin braced his feet on the gravel of the front path and brought his shield up, preparing to be pushed. “If he is an abomination, I will kill him, and if he is not, then he is none of your concern. You _will_ let me perform my sacred duty!”

Bull loomed to the man’s left then, shoulders broad enough to block out the bright colors of the sunset sky. The blond man glanced to sideways to see what the shape was, then stared upward in shock.

“I’m with him,” Bull said simply, gesturing with his chin at Delrin. The bare muscles of his arms flexed as he rolled his shoulders, and the eyes of many in the crowd followed the movement.

 _Maker in heaven, let them not attack us,_ Delrin prayed. He had only once been forced to fight civilians, but the vile memory would follow him to his grave. His whole body screamed at him to draw his sword and bash the man with his shield, but Delrin forced himself to stay still, to wait.

As though heeding his silent plea, the crowd withdrew a few paces, murmuring. Delrin caught words as people debated how to proceed but he kept his attention fixed on the man directly before him. The man, an indoor tradesman of some sort judging by his neat clothes and trimmed hair, glared back and forth between Delrin and Bull, lip curled away from his teeth.

“You _better_ kill him,” he hissed. “You better kill that little monster.”

“If he is a danger to others then I will do my duty,” Delrin replied, keeping his voice both even and loud.

“That means step back and let him do his job,” Bull added, backing him up and turning toward the crowd. “All of you are gonna walk away and go back to your dinners and fireplaces. We will be taking care of matters from here.”

The crowd listened to Bull, possibly because of his size, or possibly because of Delrin’s presence. A few minutes later, most of them had dispersed, though a few lingered around the gates, clearly wanting to see what would happen to their intended victim.

Finally Delrin turned, offering his hand to the boy and helping him to stand. The skinny arm trembled when Delrin took it. The servants stood around the still-open doors, looking anxiously to Delrin for guidance, and he stepped purposefully into the house with them. He held open  the doors just long enough for Bull to pass through after him, and for Delrin to see the other Chargers take up guard by the gates.

“Is there an empty room where I may work?” Delrin inquired, riding the clarity of near-combat. His senses stretched out keen around him, feeling for the eddies and pull of magic in use. He felt nothing, and when the servants took them to an empty drawing room and lit the lamps there, Delrin sat the boy down immediately on a couch to get a better look at him.

Acne spread over his jaw, where a patchy beard was just beginning to grow in. His wide dark eyes stared at Delrin, clearly only a little more relaxed in his presence than in that of the mob, and his ragged clothes were far too thin for the cold weather. The body underneath them was too thin as well, and his black hair hung draggled and dirty.

Delrin removed his helmet and set down his shield beside him before unbuckling his sword and setting that aside too. The boy relaxed, shrinking down into the fine fabric of the couch.

“What’s your name?” Delrin asked, pulling over a chair and seating himself so he wouldn't loom over the boy. Behind him, he heard Bull do the same.

“Willit, ser. Noam Willit,” came the breaky response of someone whose voice had only just begun to change.

“And how old are you?”

“Fifteen, ser. Sixteen this spring.”

Delrin mentally adjusted his theory from ‘young teen’ to ‘malnourished.’

“Am I correct in thinking you are a mage, Noam?”

At this, the boy’s eyes dropped and he flinched away, knees squeezing tight together and hands digging under his thighs.

“Yes, ser,” he admitted in a small voice. “I’m sorry, ser.”

“If you have done nothing wrong, then there is no reason to apologize. It is not a crime merely to be a mage, despite what some may think. Who was that man out there, the drunk one with the blond hair?”

“That’s Monsieur Faucheux,” Noam murmured, seeming to shrink still further. Delrin waited for further elaboration, but there was none. He changed approach, pulling upon the power in the room to dispel any nearby magics. When absolutely nothing changed except Noam giving him a surprised look, Delrin smiled.

“You are clearly not using any magic, Noam. Barring you doing anything drastic, I feel prepared to declare you neither an abomination or a blood mage. Now, why don’t you tell me what’s going on? If you wish, I can take you with me when I leave.”

Tears sprang immediately into the boy’s eyes, and he pressed his hands to his face as though to hide it, blinking very rapidly.

“Please,” he whispered.

Over the next five minutes, he described how his mother had died last year and Madame Faucheux had taken him in to do housework for her. Madame Faucheux had been kind enough to him but her husband had disliked Noam from the start, sabotaging his work and beating him when his wife was away. Noam had known he was a mage for over a year--he apologized for this several times until Delrin gently directed him to continue the story--but until Monsieur Faucheux had caught Noam healing his own injuries, no one else had known. Once it had come to light, however, he'd turned Noam out into the street, and begun drumming up the community against him. Noam had been stealing food and sleeping in animal pens for several weeks until he had been taken into custody by the household they were in now, per Josephine’s instructions.

Delrin’s sweat was cooling under his armor, and as the intensity of the situation faded away, he became keenly aware of Bull’s silent presence. So Delrin called for the servants, informed them that he would be taking the boy with him, and the three of them quit the estate. They rejoined the Chargers at the gate, all of whom looked at Noam with interest. Noam shrank behind Delrin, not quite clinging but clearly wanting to.

When they had been approaching the city, Delrin had hoped to purchase lodging at an inn. Sleeping indoors on a bed was always a luxurious relief after traveling. But with the boy in their care, Delrin led them out of the city instead, setting up camp on the outskirts where the farms merged into copses of evergreens dotting the seaside hills. By the time the tents were set up and the campfires lit, the moon had risen and the sky sparkled with winter stars. They were now just a bit too far north for snow, but the air was still bitter and the temperature only just above freezing.

Seated near the fire, Delrin stared into the flames, trying not to think of anything and failing. His mind spun on thoughts of the Circles, the Templars, and the meaning of duty until he heard heavy footsteps approach. The low clicking of a metal ankle brace told him exactly whose steps they were, and when the two Chargers sitting near Delrin looked up and saw who it was, they immediately vanished into the night toward another firepit.

“Mind if I join you?” Bull asked. Delrin didn’t know how to respond to this, his thoughts slow from post-conflict drop and the heat of the fire, so he said nothing. Bull seated himself anyway, easing down around his bad knee. The cold made it stiffen and ache, Delrin knew, and the impulse to offer help with it arose again as it always did. Delrin crushed it.

“Good job today,” Bull offered. “I’m glad we got there in time. The kid is with Dalish and Grim, and is incredibly confused why Dalish keeps calling her staff a bow. She’s no kind of role model, but she does know a lot about how to be so weird that people leave you alone, so there’s that.”

“You need more mages,” Delrin replied automatically. But the topic was already old between them, had been since Ansburg, and Delrin didn’t want to discuss it now. He shook his head as though to clear it of the habit.

“Why are you here?” he asked instead, bald and impatient and half expecting a fight. But instead a fight Bull merely sighed, digging his thumb into the inside of his left knee, massaging the damage there. The firelight made the scars on his face even more profound, black slashes over the skin of his forehead and cheek, and the green of his eye vanished, flattening to the same medium grey as his skin.

“I came to apologize for my behavior the other day.” Bull met Delrin’s hard stare with his calm one, breathing slow and even with only a small crease between his brows to show his concern. Half of Delrin had expected this and was unsurprised, but the other half of him was shocked into silence. “I was cruel to you on purpose, and I know I hurt and frightened you. There was no call for that, especially not while on a mission together. It was disrespectful and dangerous. I can’t take it back, but I can tell you it won’t happen again.”

A hundred responses bubbled behind Delrin’s teeth: _Of course I forgive you, it was my fault anyway. Why didn’t you tell me about Cole sooner? If I am able to be so deceived, then I am the untrustworthy one--_

But now the moment had arrived to say any of these things, Delrin let them all go, exhausted by the very idea of speaking them aloud. Self-doubt wasn’t what he felt right now, in the wake of the rescue in Jader.

“Why should I believe your word?” Delrin pushed instead, holding Bull’s gaze in open challenge. “As you so clearly assured me, I don’t understand you at all, and thus can’t possibly know when you’re being honest or why.”

For several seconds, Bull’s face didn’t move. Then he looked away, letting Delrin see his mouth pinch in discomfort and embarrassment.

“You have no reason to believe my word,” Bull admitted, leaning over his knees. “I purposely sabotaged your trust. But you deserve an apology, so.”

Delrin hated being angry, always had. An angry Templar was a dangerous one: dangerous to himself, to his brothers, and to his charges most of all. And the awful rage in Monsieur Faucheux’s face was fresh in Delrin’s mind, forever captured in a look of drunken loathing at the boy he should have taken care of. Delrin was angry, there was no denying that, but he didn't want to be.

And Bull was as handsome as ever, the measured cadence of his words pulling at Delrin like kitestrings. _Forgive_ , they told him, _forgive and it can all go back to normal, can’t it? He may not want you, but you could at least be friends again. You need this friendship and everything that goes with it._

Worse still than the memory of Bull’s cutting words was the icy knowledge that without the Chargers, Delrin still had no other real connections in the Inquisition. If he severed his ties here, Cullen would assign him to work with strangers, and the thought tired Delrin beyond words.

Apparently having passed some unspoken time limit of sitting together in silence, Bull rose. Delrin watched it, searching his heart for words until finally some tumbled out.

“I think you were right about me, and I really don’t understand you,” he said at last, half-desperate to make Bull leave and half to make him stay. “When I was told you’d been made Tal-Vashoth, I was actually afraid of taking advantage of you somehow.” A bitter laugh escaped him at the ridiculousness of it, the idea that _he_ could make Bull do anything Bull didn’t want. “I know you know how I feel for you. So when I got the news, I prayed for guidance so I would not be selfish and put my desires above your needs. I feel very foolish now.”

Bull visibly flinched, eye squeezing shut before he forced it back open, nostrils flaring and a muscle twitching at the corner of his jaw. His hands squeezed into fists for a long second before Bull very clearly released them again. Delrin didn’t dare guess what that meant--was Bull ashamed? Disgusted? Angry?

“No,” Bull sighed. “I think you understand me better than most. You knew I was....” he let out a grunt of irritation, “vulnerable.” The word seemed to cost him something to admit. “If you had asked the night I got back, I would have slept with you then. And I wanted you to ask.”

Delrin swallowed, and swallowed again, and then couldn’t help the tears that ran down his cheeks. He couldn’t tell if he was feeling nothing or feeling a great deal. His hands were cold, that much he knew, but everything else faded into tingling uncertainty.

“It wasn’t a good time to start something, though.” Bull’s inhale was clearly audible, a long draw through his battered nose. “It would have been much worse if I’d said what I said when I’d already slept with you. And I probably would have felt even more compelled to push you away.”

“Why?” Delrin asked, mortified by the high-pitched pleading of the word: _M_ _ake this make sense again,_ it begged. _Make_ us _make sense._ “Why push me at all?”

For a while Bull just looked at Delrin, and then seated himself again, this time only a few feet away. Maker, he was still huge, so much bigger than Delrin, but Delrin had none of his usual shivery response to it. 

“I was trying to act Qunari.” Bull snorted in derision, lip curling. “I’m clearly too much of a Tal-Vashoth to even know what that means anymore. The truth is I’ve been slipping away from the Qun for years.” He grimaced. “If you’d been a Qunari, a Tamassran or a Ben-Hassrath, talking to you would have been the correct thing to do. They would have needed to know what I was thinking and feeling in order to work with me to keep me an effective part of the Qun. And I would have told them.” Bull huffed out a mirthless laugh, grinning without humor. “Fuckin’ stupid of me, thinking it was a good idea to push you away. Lashing out at you is one of the _most_ Tal-Vashoth things I’ve done, putting my insecurity and anger over the good of others. Look what I accomplished: I hurt you and worried everyone else by doing it, and I still feel like shit!” Bull shook his head, scratching at the stubble where his chin met his neck. “Tal-va- _fucking_ -shoth.”

Something squirmed at the back of Delrin’s mind, calling for his attention.

“The night you got back to Skyhold, you said--” Delrin began, and choked on the words. He swallowed, squeezing his fingers together so tight that the bones hurt. “You said you got to live by _my_ example now. Only now....now you’ve told me I’m influenced by demons and that I never _chose_ to leave the Templars at all. Were you making fun of me, even then?”

“No,” Bull replied at once, answer ready and automatic. “You know what I used to be called under the Qun? _Hissrad_. It means _liar_ , because I was well-known for being able to twist even the truth.” Bull let out a growl, this time scratching at the base of one horn. _Fidgeting is a sign of discomfort,_ Bull had told him once. “You don’t know Cole. Cole is a weird little shit, but he’s....sweet. I was scared of him at first because I thought he was some kind of demon, and he can root around in people’s heads and read their goddamn minds just like one.” Bull sighed, and Delrin watched him, uncertain where this story was leading. “But he’s also a clueless kid, and he hates demons just as much as I do. He is about demons the way I was about Tal-Vashoth, really. You always hate what you’re afraid you’ll become.” His eye shut for a moment, and the burning logs glowed in them when it reopened. “I knew there were things wrong with the Qun. Not everything, mind, there’s a lot of good in it. And there are some Qunari who work to change the things they don’t like about the Qun. Then there are others, like me, who stood in the ocean and complained when I got wet.”

At this, Bull fixed his eye upon Delrin, gaze boring into him. Delrin wanted to flinch, to look away, but he made himself tolerate it.

“You left the Order because you were manipulated by someone who cares about you. You don’t know Cole yet, but he knows _you_. And out of all the Templars in Therinfal, he chose to rescue _you_. Even having read your damn mind! That says a lot about you, but I still used that to make you doubt yourself.” He looked away again, grinning so that his teeth glittered in the dancing flames. It wasn’t a happy expression. “I’m a very good liar. I can make even the truth mean whatever I want it to mean.”

Closing his eyes, Delrin forced himself to breathe.

“I need some time,” he confessed at last. “And maybe you do too.”

This got a nod, and then Bull rose and moved away into the dark. This time, his footsteps were silent.


	5. Beloved and Precious to Him

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains the sex scene! If you were here for the slow burn and don't want to read about sex, skip everything after "ride the Bull" (lol) and go right to the word "cherry" (LOL!)

A letter delivered to the Barris estate from Skyhold

_Dear Mother, Father, and Corram,_

_There are stranger things in this world than even I knew, and one sees many strange things as a Templar._

_I recently became acquainted with a being named Cole. I say ‘being’ rather than ‘young man’ because Cole is not exactly human. Nor is he an elf or dwarf or any other usual sort of person. Cole is, so far as anyone in the Inquisition can determine, an entirely new creature._

_He tells me he must once have been a spirit of compassion in the Fade. He was drawn to our world at the White Spire, called by the suffering of a young mage there who died slowly due to Templar cruelty and neglect. No one is entirely certain how Cole took the young man’s shape, but he did. Cole now appears to be human, and seems to be becoming more human the more time he spends here. He used to be able to make himself invisible to those around him, and he has recently lost the ability._

_I’m writing to you about Cole because when I became aware of his existence, I also became aware of the profound impact he’s had on my life specifically._

_It turns out I did not leave Therinfal of my own full volition. Instead, Cole spent weeks convincing me to leave without me realizing that he had done so. He hid himself from me for fear I would kill him, as other Templars had already tried to do. Nor did I arrive at Haven on my own as I had supposed. Cole helped me throughout that difficult journey, including carrying me sometimes when my strength gave out. It is because of Cole that I am still alive to write you this letter._

_I was at first extremely discomfited to discover that I owe my life to a creature some might call a demon. It is now my professional opinion as a Templar that he is not a demon, but nor can he be easily classified as either a human or a spirit. He is not even a mage, as his skills and abilities are unheard-of among mages no matter their species._

_I have met many strange young people over the years, those altered by traumatic discovery of their status as mages and other forms of neglect and abuse. Pain and fear may make any of us behave oddly, and natural diversity makes some of us peculiar regardless of experience. I have spoken to Cole often since my return from Jader a week ago, and if I had not known of his origins and our shared history, I would have thought him an eccentric young man in his late teens and nothing more. Cole sometimes speaks in riddles and rhymes and makes little sense, and other times will make remarks so pointed and incisive that they leave one quite breathless._

_I do not know what you will make of this letter. I hope it will not make you afraid or disgusted. I am well as ever, and grateful to know I am protected and cared for by so many, including those whose existence I may not even know of._

_Your loving son and brother,_

_Delrin Barris_

 

**

 

Another letter delivered separately to the Barris estate

_Dear Corram,_

_Thank you so very very much for all your obvious and dreadful jokes about cock size. Ha ha, you are so very clever. (Can you tell this is sarcasm?) Why do I even write to you? (Bull is so big though, I admit I’m a little worried. He wears a cup into battle, of course, but otherwise doesn’t seem to wear anything under his trousers, so I’ve seen what he’s got. And given how many people have had him before me, it’s not like it’s a great mystery whether he’s a grower or a shower. The answer: both. I may die.)_

_On that note: Bull has been made Tal-Vashoth. It was a dreadful affair in which the entire company of Chargers almost died. And Bull has not always handled the transition with grace. Sometimes he is irritable and standoffish--and others he cannot keep his hands off me. As of the time of this writing, it has been nothing more than the type of touching one might see between any pair of lovers in public, except that we are not lovers. Not yet anyway, though there is now a clear understanding that we will be once Bull has sorted himself out. Pray for my fortitude, for I may chafe myself to death otherwise._

_I admit, I am already anticipating making you extremely uncomfortable with the graphic details of our intimacy, just as you did to me after your marriage. I am glad your relationship is so healthy, but I still haven’t forgiven you for telling me that much about my sister-in-law before I’d even had the chance to meet her._

_I enjoy hearing about your sleepless nights and endless trials running after Ceridor, though. Serves you right. Please tell me more._

_But in all seriousness, if I survive the Inquisition’s final efforts against Corypheus, I will come visit. I want to meet your beautiful child. And I will try to bring Bull and the Chargers with me. I am sure they can find work near Lake Calenhad to give us all an excuse._

_Your extremely long-suffering brother,_

_Delrin_

 

**

 

A dictated letter delivered to Jader from Skyhold

_Chère Mme Faucheux,_

_I am at Skyhold with the Inquisition. I sleep in a big underground room. There are many many mages here who also sleep underground. Only the nobs sleep above ground. I know you do not like me to call them that but they are, and many of them wear jewels and such._

_They say they will teach me to read and write soon just like they are teaching me magery. Then I will be able to write you letters on my own._

_I am sorry I did not tell you I was a mage. I was afraid you would not want me anymore._

_But do not worry it is not just mages and nobs here even though the Inquisitor himself is a mage. The Templar who rescued me is here too. His name is Ser Delrin Barris as you have probably heard. He trains troops every morning and then takes off and polishes his armor and then writes letters or something every afternoon here in the library and then usually goes to the chapel downstairs to pray and then eats dinner in the mess hall and then sometimes goes to the tavern to be with his friends. He is a very good man and checks on me every few days even though his friends are very strange. One of them is a big Qunari just like the Inquisitor and he also helped rescue me. I know you said Qunari are brutes and that the Inquisitor couldn’t possibly be one but he is and wow is he large but he is also a good Andrastian so we are safe. And Iron Bull (that is the name of the one who helped rescue me) is also big but not as big and has a lot of bosom he doesn’t always put away but he is very nice even if he does take up a lot of Ser Delrin Barris’s time. The Inquisitor doesn’t always put away his bosoms either. I do not understand how they don’t get cold. I tried standing in the rooms downstairs where everyone sleeps without my shirt on and I got cold, and those rooms are heated and everything._

_But Ser Delrin Barris dresses very smartly and I get to see him a few days a week every week and I am making friends among the mages so do not worry about me. They even feed me three times a day and I can always go to the kitchens for more!_

_Noam Willit_

_Transcribed by Helisma Derington_

 

**

 

Until the man in Inquisition armor had already stabbed Bull, Delrin had been anxiously wondering if this meeting on the ramparts was a prelude to something more intimate. Then Bull was bleeding from one shoulder, he’d cut his attacker’s throat with the same knife, and the other man had shouted something in Qunlat before being thrown off the wall with a wail. Delrin hadn’t even had time to get around to an angle where he could have helped.

Now on high alert, Delrin glanced around the rampart, checking for anyone else. But only the two of them remained on this segment of the wall, the wind whipping Bull’s pants tight against his legs as he peered at his arm.

“Are you okay? Who were those men??”

Grimacing at the gushing wound--deceptively small on the surface, as the knife had gone all the way in to the hilt--Bull pulled a kerchief from his pocket and pressed it to the cut.

“Sorry, Del. Wouldn’t have involved you in this, but I thought I might need backup. Guess I’m not even worth sending professionals for, though.” Bull grimaced, not looking at Delrin.

“You were _expecting_ assassins? _Qunari_ assassins?” Delrin all but shouted, the intensity of the now-over fight making him sharp and loud. His body was ready to attack something but there was nothing left to attack. “You didn’t tell me, I didn’t even bring my sword! What if they used poison? We need to get you to a medic!”

But Bull just blew a frustrated breath out through his nose. “Oh, they definitely used poison. Saar-qamek, liquid form. But don’t worry, I’ve been dosing myself with the antidote, so I won’t be going crazy or puking my guts up. It just stings like shit.” At this, he looked up from the red-soaked kerchief and smiled at Delrin, raising one eyebrow. “I’ve hurt myself worse than this fooling around in bed, Del, it’s not a big deal. Besides, the sting is kind of exciting.”

Delrin leveled his best glare at Bull, stepping up close to make sure Bull had the wound fully covered. He did, and Delrin knew for a fact that Bull clotted fast, but Delrin pulled out his own kerchief and held it out anyway.

“The fact that you’re trying to distract me with flirting when I’m clearly not in the mood just tells me how rattled you are. What was this, Bull?”

The smile fell away at that, leaving Bull’s face perfectly blank and serene.

“This was just the Ben-Hassrath making it clear that I’m Tal-Vashoth. Sending two guys with knives against me isn’t a hit, it’s a formality. Probably just clearing the other trash out of their own ranks and saw me as a convenient means. They _had_ to have expected these two to die, so I gotta wonder what they did wrong to deserve this. The Qun doesn’t throw away anything it can still use.”

“Will there be more assassins?” Delrin pushed, refusing to be sidetracked into a discussion about Qunari practices. Bull shook his head.

“I don’t think so. If they really wanted me dead, I’d be dead. Any poison other than saar-qamek slipped into my food would have been a lot more effective.”

“So they’re still using you to do their dirty work even after throwing you away,” Delrin responded before he could think. Bull gave him a startled glance, and then his mouth pinched up in a look of disgust.

“Yeah,” he answered before Delrin could apologize. “Guess they are.”

Forcing himself to take a deep breath, Delrin paused before he said anything worse. Then he moved closer, curling his hands around each of Bull’s bare elbows.

“I’m sorry, Bull. That was insensitive of me. Now c’mon. You may not need a medic for the poison, but it still needs stitches or a potion.”

To Delrin’s surprise, Bull consented without a fuss. Half an hour and a potion later, the wound was gone as if it had never been there, leaving just smooth grey skin.

“Didn’t want to remember this fight, huh?” Delrin asked quietly as they left the building in the courtyard where the medics worked. It was always full of both new refugees and the everyday injuries that resulted from this many people being in the same space, and they had to move around several other people to get out.

“I have better scars,” Bull replied, not responding to the question, and Delrin let the non-answer go. Bull always got cagey about his status as a Tal-Vashoth.

 

**

 

Delrin had expected Bull to continue to be standoffish the rest of the day, but over dinner in the mess hall, Bull’s hands kept straying to Delrin’s neck, his thigh, the small of his back. Flustered and half-hard under his clothes, Delrin missed his mouth with his fork no less than three times. Krem kept rolling his eyes in disgust, Sera had already abandoned ship to bring food to the Undercroft, Cole kept smiling fondly at the two of them, and Grim was watching them with uncomfortable interest. But the conversation from the rest of the table’s occupants hadn’t faltered, and Delrin managed to finish the meal with a minimum of self-humiliation.

“If I invited you to my rooms tonight, would you come?” Bull asked when the table began to clear. Delrin turned his head to stare up at him, eyes wide.

“Yes?” he answered automatically, too shocked to think straight. “Why tonight?” he added a second later, because if he’d learned anything in the last weeks, it was not to take Bull completely at face value.

“Because tonight I know we’re not going to be interrupted by assassins trying to come after me when my attention is elsewhere.”

Delrin blinked as he realized what this meant. “Wait--so you mean we could have been sleeping together already, but you were worried about me being _collateral damage?”_

Bull nodded, not taking his eye off Delrin’s face.

“And yet you still brought me up to the battlements today without warning me.”

Bull shrugged. “You're good in a fistfight, but have you ever gotten into a fight in the middle of sex? Or gone through years of Ben-Hassrath training to hide facial expressions when I wasn’t looking?”

Delrin stared wide-eyed back at him. He couldn’t tell if he was grateful for the concern, disturbed at the implication that Bull _had_ gotten into a fight in the middle of sex, or saddened by Bull’s complete inability to accept help in a more normal way, so he just sat there with his mouth half-open. Madame Leliana would have had _someone_ suitable for a situation like today’s, surely?

Bull only wrapped his arm a little tighter around Delrin, pulling him closer to Bull’s big warm side.

“Your face right now is proving my point. If I’d warned you or the guards, the assassins would’ve been tipped off. Anyway point is, we’re both fine, the Ben-Hassrath probably won’t send anybody else after me, and you’ve been waiting a long time to get to ride the Bull.”

Shaking his head, Delrin couldn’t help either the heat pooling on his cheeks or between his legs.

“Leaving aside your reckless self-endangerment for discussion at another time, that is a terrible line.”

“It’s working, though, isn’t it?”

“I mean....yeah,” Delrin admitted, ducking his chin and trying to ignore the way Grim was listening in. Grim didn’t mean anything by it, he just avidly enjoyed watching people. “Not that you’d have to try very hard with me anymore,” Delrin muttered, because it really was a terrible line.

“I think you’re a reason to try _extra_ hard. Just not on my pick-up lines,” Bull grinned, nuzzling down into Delrin’s close-cropped hair. People from other tables were starting to take notice now, Delrin saw, heads turning and gazes lingering. By tomorrow, even more speculation and rumor would be all over Skyhold. He still couldn’t tell if he was mortified or proud from how open Bull was about his intentions toward Delrin. Delrin had never had a public relationship before, just quiet, furtive ones with other Templars that had never lasted long regardless of how either of them had felt. Too many missions outside the Tower, too much time spent apart, too many marks already on his record to risk more disciplinary hearings.

Bull had never done this either, though, and that didn’t seem to be stopping him. So when Bull rose and pulled Delrin up after him, Delrin went. When Bull took Delrin’s clammy hand in his much bigger one, Delrin allowed it with his heart trying to beat its way out of his chest. And when Bull shut the door to his room and leaned Delrin up against it to start on the clasps of Delrin’s coat, Delrin allowed that too. The layers of Delrin’s clothes closest to his skin were sweated through, and he half-dreaded getting to that stage when Bull would doubtless find out.

“You’re nervous,” Bull stated, leaning down to breathe on Delrin jaw before pressing a kiss to the place where Delrin formed his single dimple when he smiled. Delrin shuddered even at that, a tremor running through his belly, mouth already aching with the desire to be kissed.

“Very,” Delrin admitted. This didn’t seem real. It had been so long--

“Because it’s me, or because it’s sex?”

“Both?”

Bull got through the row of buttons, pushing open the heavy wool and curling his fingers into the layers of linen underneath. This time Bull kissed the thin skin beside Delrin’s right eye, which fluttered shut, blocking out sight of the room sparsely dotted with Bull’s few belongings. He wasn’t often sentimental about objects. Just scars, and his men.

“How long’s it been for you?” Bull asked.

Delrin tried to think through the haze already filling his mind as Bull drew a line of kisses down Delrin’s cheek. Bull was so big, and his familiar smell was everywhere in here, and Delrin’s craving felt like a physical presence filling his whole body and changing its very substance. As though if Bull gripped too hard, his fingers would pass right through Delrin’s stomach, finding him as porous and transparent as a magical illusion.

“Three....years? Longer?” Delrin mumbled into Bull’s stubble, which scraped at his lips so he shivered again. His knees were made of sand, crumbling before a tide.

“A long time to wait to find the right person.”

The words moved in little tickles over Delrin’s upper lip. He couldn’t even make himself nod, afraid if he moved that Bull might withdraw and this would all turn out to be a dream. But instead Bull’s mouth closed over his own, enveloping and quiet, and the kiss that followed pulled the breath right out of Delrin. The sigh eddied between them.

When he’d let himself imagine it, Delrin had expected that Iron Bull’s kisses would be possessive and demanding, all teeth and tongue. He didn’t know why, now, because this slow draw of their mouths against each other, so that their lips caught and parted and caught again, seemed so right. The world shrank down to the room around them, and then just to Bull, and then just to the places they touched.

But the unsteadiness of Delrin’s left knee intensified. He tried to brace his right, but all of him was wobbly now.

“Can we take this to the bed?” he gasped into Bull’s cheekbone, hating that he needed to pause the kiss to say it. “I can barely stand,” Delrin admitted. When he opened his eyes the sight of the room startled him, as though part of him had expected everything to literally disappear like he’d _felt_ it had during the kiss.

Then Bull bent, hooked an arm under Delrin’s knees, and carried him over to the bed. “Valet service,” he joked.

“This is much nicer than the last time you carried me this way,” Delrin smiled, secretly delighted with the fact that Bull could do this. Delrin wasn’t the biggest of men, but he was still bulky with muscle and not _short_ , either. He curled his arms together over his chest, in no real hurry to be put down. And given that it was all of three steps from the door to the bed, Bull didn’t seem to be in a hurry either. He blinked down at Delrin, face relaxed.

“You remember that? I wasn’t sure.”

“I remember it happened. Not much else,” Delrin admitted. “I’d much rather make better memories now, though.”

“Noted,” came the immediate answer, and then Bull did kneel on the edge of the bed, laying Delrin out with exquisite care. Delrin immediately sat back up to shuck of his jacket, though, and to unbutton the top layer of his clothes beneath and get them off too. Which left him in a linen shirt and wool breeches.

Bull waggled his eyebrows at Delrin and popped the fastenings on the fur-lined vest he wore. While the skin underneath was of course nothing Delrin hadn’t seen before, it was new seeing it in this context, and Delrin’s heartbeat sped as Bull pulled off the leather and tossed it onto the desk across the room.

“Should I take the rest off?” Bull asked, curling one thumb inside the top of his trousers. The question surprised Delrin; the room was plenty warm, heat emanating up from the floors below and pooling under the roof, and warmed further by the fireplace someone had lit earlier. It was mostly embers now, but even so.

“Yes?” Delrin ventured. “I mean, isn’t that the point?”

“You tell me, big guy,” Bull smiled, and seated himself on the bedside to unscrew his ankle brace and take off his boots. Delrin didn’t know how to respond to that statement, so he said nothing, and a few moments later, the brace was stowed under the bed beside the boots and socks. Bull wiggled long, pale grey toes. Maker, even Bull’s _toes_ were attractive, Delrin thought to himself, glad Bull couldn’t read minds like Cole. The floor was still cold even with the room warm, though, so Delrin wasn’t surprised when Bull pulled his feet off the flags and laid his long body out beside Delrin.

The nervousness that had briefly faded roared back at full strength. Delrin stared up at Bull, who leaned up on one elbow and watched Delrin with interest, and then Delrin untied the knots at his throat and wrists. Luckily he had only tied them into bows this morning, or his shaking hands might not have succeeded at the knots. Feeling as if he were crossing some invisible boundary, Delrin pulled off his shirt.

“I’ve always wondered what scars you’ve kept, if any,” Bull purred, one hand falling onto Delrin’s hip. By coincidence it was the one that had been injured when they’d first met, but any mark from that wound was long gone, healed by the Inquisitor himself.

“I have a few,” Delrin said, laying back and wondering if his heartbeat was visible through his belly. It had to be, it was beating so hard. “Mostly from childhood. My parents believed that unless an injury was severe, letting us heal un-aided was the best way to teach us not to do dangerous things.”

“Sensible,” Bull agreed, eye roving over Delrin’s bare chest, with its dusting of little black curls. Bull’s palm rose from Delrin’s clothed hip to the bare skin of Delrin’s ribs, the web between fingers and thumb curving up and around Delrin’s pectoral muscle. His breath shortened, coming high into his shoulders and chest in little gasps like a hare’s.

Recklessly emboldened by that touch, Delrin undid the buttons of his fly, staring at the ceiling because he couldn’t meet Bull’s eye while pushing the trousers down and leaving himself only in his linen undergarments. Gooseflesh immediately rose on his arms and legs, spreading over his chest and neck in a wave as he kicked off his soft boots and the pants above them. One boot toppled off the bed and thudded onto the floor.

“Mmm,” Bull hummed, his approval honeyed and eloquent even with a single wordless noise. And then he rolled forward, blanketing half of Delrin’s body with his own before bending his neck to kiss him again.

Delrin lost track of time in the lush stickiness of their lips, then the sweet wet slide of Bull’s tongue. All he could feel was the delicious weight of Bull’s body on his own, the way his toes only reached Bull’s calves with a downward stretch, and the possessive, exploratory squeeze of Bull’s left hand as it roved over Delrin’s arm, ribs, and thigh.

Delrin had always wondered what it must have been like for Andraste, laying down for a God. He didn’t presume to believe he knew, but he couldn’t help but think of this as some echo of it: the overwhelm, the breathless anticipation, the ardor, even the simple feeling of being smaller.

Then Bull lifted his leg away from Delrin’s hips and slid his hand down between Delrin’s legs, and Delrin realized he was still as soft as a Nevarran peach. Visions of ruining the entire relationship before it had even really begun paraded through Delrin’s head, mortifying and plentiful.

“I uh,” Delrin stammered, “I’m maybe _very_ very nervous. As we already established.”

But Bull only grinned, not moving his hand from its possessive curl around Delrin’s genitals. “This is pretty common, actually. Especially with guys who are intimidated by me.”

“I’m not!” Delrin protested, his other hand digging into the skin of Bull’s shoulder. He couldn’t find the words for what he meant, language lost in the contact between Bull’s fingertips and the soft stretch of skin behind Delrin’s balls. “It’s....I mean you’ve never _made love_ to anyone before, so--well, it’s not the same? And--” Delrin fumbled, trying to explain.

“'Course I have,” Bull interrupted. At this Delrin shot him a Look from very close range, but Bull’s smile didn’t budge and he placed another slow kiss on Delrin’s frown, dispelling it. His thumb stroked the big tendon on the inside of Delrin’s thigh, and another long shiver went through the smaller man. “I know you’re not talking about just fucking. But I have _made love_ to people before. Just because you’re only with someone once or twice at a go doesn’t mean it can’t be intense, or emotional, or meaningful.”

 _It doesn’t?_ Delrin asked silently. Casual sex was by very definition meaningless, wasn’t it? But he swallowed the question down, now anxious, confused, _and_ jealous.

“You’ve never been in a _relationship_ before, though, right?” he persisted, worried too that putting the word ‘relationship’ on this would be the thing that frightened Bull away somehow.

But Bull remained just as close as ever, their skin sticking together as Delrin sweated. “You got me there,” Bull murmured, expression tender. “But I know sex, and I’ve known how to care for people my whole life. And loving you is easy, so how about you just relax and let me do it?”

Heat burned up over Delrin’s face and he shut his eyes, unable to look at anything after those words: _loving you is easy_. To his mortification he started shivering worse. Laid out together as they were, Bull could doubtless feel the tremors. Embarrassed, Delrin tried to pull his arm away from where it was wrapped around Bull’s shoulders, but all he could do was press his knuckles upward against the cool wood of the headboard, feeling the gouges Bull’s horns had made there.

Instead of letting Delrin go, Bull kissed him again, the touch of his tongue to the seam of Delrin’s lips a gentle inquiry. Delrin couldn’t help opening up to let him.

One kiss turned into two, into twenty, and Bull’s free hand wandered Delrin’s body as his other cradled Delrin’s nape and the back of his skull. The pad of a thumb traced over his hipbone, the top rim of his navel, the divots in between his ribs, the inside of his elbow, the top of his soft cock. The touches tickled at the same time as they left Delrin feeling electric and charged, but he couldn’t squirm away with Bull’s weight pinning him down and he was grateful for that. Bull swallowed the noises he made, biting them tenderly between his teeth as he nibbled at Delrin’s mouth.

In the buzzing fog Delrin’s thoughts had become, he remembered that this was what it had been like losing his virginity. He’d at least managed an erection then, thanks to his raging teenage hormones, but he’d been overwrought and eager like this, with no idea what to do with his hands. His nails dug into his palms before tapping against the headboard, over and over again, indecisive. He was so aroused that every touch felt like it had a direct line to his cock.

He could only imagine what it would feel like if Bull fucked him in this state. He really might die, he thought.

Bull let out a purring little chuckle as he moved down from Delrin’s lips to his neck and chest. With his mouth freed up, Delrin stopped even trying to regulate and slow his breaths. When Bull closed his teeth over a nipple with careful curiosity, Delrin’s hips rolled automatically up against Bull’s thigh.

“Please,” he begged, uncertain what exactly he was even asking for. Bull swirled his tongue down in response, and Delrin thought maybe that had been it. Except that made him imagine that mouth between his legs, and the thought evoked another tensing of his thighs, pushing him up against Bull.

Bull arrived there soon enough, detouring to run his tongue along each hipbone and laughing when it made Delrin squirm and giggle and grab at Bull’s horns. But when Bull peeled back Delrin’s linen underwear to reveal him still resting limp on his own balls, Delrin tensed up and started to apologize.

“I’m so sorry,” he began, feeling he needed to explain himself again. “I don’t know what’s wrong, normally this doesn’t happen--”

Bull just laughed again, smiling. “Are you having a good time?”

“Yes,” Delrin breathed, staring down. “Of course I am. I love you.”

Bull’s cheek rounded up under his eyepatch when he smiled, and he tilted his head to place a kiss to the base of Delrin’s quiescent cock. Delrin couldn’t help squirming, which managed to awkwardly press him up against Bull’s prickly stubble. Delrin subsided again, but the simple sight of Bull’s face down there had Delrin’s heart trying to beat out of his chest.

“I’m not upset about it,” Bull soothed, and his casual tone calmed Delrin down. He took a deep breath and let it out. “Plus, this makes it even easier to fit into my mouth. Want me to show you?”

The calm had been very short-lived. Nodding vigorously, Delrin’s head spun with anticipation. Bull flashed him a delighted grin, and then opened his mouth and licked Delrin right up into it with a curl of his tongue.

Only the immense breadth of Bull’s shoulders kept him from getting smacked on the ears by the tensing of Delrin’s thighs. The abrupt change in temperature from the cool air of the room to the searing heat of Bull’s mouth burned out Delrin’s mind, leaving him wordless and entirely focused on the pressure of Bull’s lips and the wet stroke of his tongue over the sheathed tip. Embarrassment mixed with gratitude as Delrin realized that if he’d been hard, he might have come immediately, or been rude in the helpless way he couldn’t stop himself from thrusting against Bull’s chin. But like this, all he managed was to earn himself a humming laugh, making the pebbled flesh of Bull’s hard palate buzz. Delrin collapsed right back onto the covers with a whine.

He lost track of time, the world fading out again to leave only Bull and his mouth and the sweet pleasure of it. A change in the texture of the sensation and the movement of Bull’s head told Delrin that he was probably hardening at last, but he’d stopped caring now.

Finally a questioning hum combined with the press of a fingertip against Delrin’s opening brought him back from the almost meditative state he’d fallen into. It still took several seconds for him to even work out what Bull was asking.

“Yes,” he replied as soon as Delrin could make his throat work. “Please, yes--”

But Bull pulled away, releasing his mouthful so that it dropped wet against Delrin’s belly.

“What--” Delrin began to ask, but Bull preempted him.

“Bedside table, Kadan. Gimme the jar there. Unless you’re into me doing this with spit?”

Delrin honestly had to consider the choice, because he didn’t want to move and he very much wanted Bull’s mouth back on him. But then he remembered the size of Bull’s fingers and the toughness of his calluses, and rolled over on the bed to fetch the appropriate salve. He spared a single thought to wonder what the unknown Qunlat word meant, but when Delrin passed the jar down, Bull took him right back in again, a long warm slide from tip to base that left Delrin collapsed and making high-pitched noises. The next thing he knew was the inquisitive rub of a blunt fingernail against him, slippery-smooth, before it turned down to the pad instead and then pushed.

Delrin let it in, and in, and _in_ until it bottomed out with bony knuckles pressing against him. He stared blindly up at the ceiling, his own hands flexing against the thick fabric of the blankets. He was aware he was making noise, heels pressed to Bull’s sides below his arms, Bull’s left hand curled around Delrin’s hip to hold him still. He wanted to squirm, he wanted to never move again so he could just let the feeling of Bull inside him continue just like this, and he also he wanted to come.

When Bull withdrew his hand and curled that single oversized digit upward, sensation bloomed in Delrin like the first glow of sunrise. The feeling grew and grew till Delrin distantly wondered if he looked like stained glass, all color and light and so fragile that a single tap might break him.

Bull let out a deep-chested moan around him, and at that evidence of Bull’s enjoyment Delrin shattered. Every bit of him flew apart, leaving him shaking and scattered again.

Bull disentangled himself, pushing up the bed between Delrin’s spread legs and lying fully on top of him to bite viciously at his lower lip. The sting of Bull’s teeth and the huge weight of him crushing Delrin down into the mattress brought him back to himself faster than he would have thought possible. The aftershocks of his climax still rolled through him, but he suddenly had the awareness to kiss back when Bull let go of his lip, wrapping his arms around Bull’s neck to keep him close and tasting himself inside of Bull. This time Bull’s hips worked, grinding down onto him as Bull kissed him as though one of them might die if he stopped. It hurt, the massive shape of Bull’s erection dragging across Delrin’s own oversensitive one and the bite of his teeth and the sandpaper of his beard, but Delrin found he wanted that just as much as he’d wanted the pleasure. The overwhelm of it, the excess of sensation and pressure and closeness, carried him right along on a wave of intensity as though his climax hadn’t even ended, just changed form.

“Just wait till I’m inside you,” Bull growled. “Wait till I’ve stretched you out enough to take me and I can fuck you on _this_ \--”

“Maker, yes, _please_ ,” Delrin whispered airlessly, the most he could get out with Bull on top of him. Bull shifted, his left hand clamping around Delrin’s nape and tilting his head up to kiss him again, voracious as though he wished to eat Delrin alive.

Time dilated, or perhaps Delrin himself did. He felt as though the whole of him were stretching out just to take exactly what was happening now. When Bull finally came, wet in the place where their bellies sealed together, Delrin’s own body tried to do the same again in sympathy.

When at last Bull rolled off to the side, pulling Delrin with him so he wound up perched on top like a cherry on a cake, the sudden rush of air into his lungs left him dizzier still.

 _“Maker,”_ he gasped, unsure if it was an oath or a prayer, and dropped his forehead to Bull’s chest. “Maker in heaven.”

Bull chuckled, the deep, fast breaths he was drawing in lifting Delrin’s whole body with every inhale.

“You okay, Kadan?”

The words fell from Delrin’s tongue without him even deciding to say them.

“‘My heart is yours, my body is yours, my life is yours. For all who walk in the sight of the Maker are one,’” he recited, reverent and blissful. Then a second later his brain caught up and he wished he didn’t have a tongue at all, squeezing his eyes shut tight in humiliation and muffling his face in Bull’s shoulder. Of all the times to misquote the Verses at someone who wasn’t a believer, this had to be pretty high on the list of Most Inappropriate Moments.

He felt Bull pause below him, the rise and fall of his ribs stilling. Then Bull laughed, the movement shaking Delrin like an earthquake, and big arms wrapped around him.

“It was that good, huh?” Bull snickered, and lifted his head to nip at Delrin’s ear. “If I’ve got you rewriting the Chant to make it sexier, I’m taking that as a compliment.”

“It was meant to be something like that,” Delrin admitted, words barely intelligible from where he refused to move his face from Bull’s collarbone. Bull only kept laughing, though, and slowly Delrin’s body relaxed again. The sweat on his back chilled in the open air, but he didn’t want to move, not even to ask Bull to wrap the blankets around them. He especially didn’t want to open his jaw again in case something else ridiculous fell out of it. But he did bury his cold hands under Bull’s neck, and his feet in the warm crevice between Bull’s knees.

“Do you know what ‘Kadan’ means?” Bull asked at last, interrupting Delrin’s wandering thoughts as he replayed the last hour in his mind. Delrin shook his head, squashing his cheek against Bull.

“It roughly translates to ‘my heart.’ First caught myself calling you that when that demon in Ansburg almost killed you.”

At this, Delrin did push himself up, staring into Bull’s single eye. Delrin knew he could be eloquent enough sometimes, but freshly fucked and astonished by what he knew to be a confession of longstanding love was not one of those times.

“Oh, Bull,” he said instead, and didn’t know what else to add. But Bull seemed to take it as a full response, looking away with a bashful half-grin.

“Yeah, I know, way before I even got chucked out of the Qun. In retrospect, a pretty obvious sign I wasn’t really a Qunari any longer. You remember when I was being a manipulative asshole, and I told you I wanted the re-educators to find me and take me back?”

Delrin tensed at this unexpected topic change, worried where this conversation might now lead.

“Yes?”

“What I didn’t say, in addition to not really telling you about Cole, was that I kept daydreaming that the re-educators would take both of us.” Bull sighed, lashes covering his eye as he looked down and away. “Weird as it might sound for me to say this now, it was a romantic thought. I didn’t want to be a Tal-Vashoth, but I didn’t want to lose you, either. And I wasn’t kidding when I said you’d make a good Qunari. It was the only way I could think of that let me keep both things I wanted most.”

Aching with tenderness, Delrin leaned down and fit their mouths together again.

“May I stay the night?” he asked quietly when they parted, and Bull nodded, running his thumb along the divot of Delrin’s spine.

 

**

 

Even though they were finally warm under the covers and the torch had long since burned out, Delrin found he could not sleep. Tired and satisfied as he was (Bull had given him an even more thorough demonstration of his mouth and hands after the first one) Delrin felt something scratching at the back of his mind that would not let him rest. It wasn’t Bull’s closeness, because Delrin was used to sleeping in proximity to him. Delrin usually bunked with Krem, but Krem usually set up his tent right beside Bull’s, and fabric and leather did nothing to block the sounds people made while sleeping. And of course Delrin had begun Bull’s acquaintance by waking up beside him.

When Delrin finally realized what didn’t feel right, he turned over onto his belly, pushing up onto his elbows and bowing his head over his clasped hands.

 _Beloved One,_ he began, and then thought carefully about what to say next. _I am grateful for the love that has come into my life. I hope to continue to be worthy of it. Guide my words and actions so that if this is meant to last, I will do my part in sustaining it. Teach me to love unselfishly and yet ask for what I need. Bull tells me no love can survive without that._

A change in Bull’s breathing told Delrin he was awake, and the hand that slid over the bottom of Delrin’s spine reinforced that.

“You okay, Kadan?”

“I’m blessed,” Delrin answered honestly, and then let himself be pulled up against Bull’s side and held there, listening to the slow beating of his big heart.


	6. EPILOGUE: In the Turning of the Seasons

A letter sent from Val Royeaux to the Barris estate

_Dear Mother, Father, and Corram,_

_There have been reports of rifts near Denerim, as I’m sure you know. Given our recent victory in the Arbor Wilds and the impending crowning of the new Divine, the Inquisitor has been too busy to go north to handle rifts. But once the Divine is crowned, we will be traveling east to Fereldan. The Inquisitor will be continuing to Denerim with the Chargers, but I intend to stay with you for a visit at last. And Iron Bull will be staying with us._

_Father, I know you do not approve of my choice of partner, but so help me if you are rude to him or the Inquisitor, I will invite Mother and Corram and Eriada and Ceridor back to Skyhold without you, and you can remain at the estate and stew in your opinions alone. Bull is no enemy of yours and his being a Tal-Vashoth is no reason to disapprove. He is a better man than most Andrastians I’ve known, and willing to grant you as much respect as you grant him. Besides, I know Mother is excited to meet him, and Corram as well. And Bull loves children, so Ceridor will undoubtedly love him._

_Expect us within a month. I cannot wait to see you all again at last._

_Your loving son and brother,_

_Delrin Barris_

 

**

 

From a treatise written about Chantry history and the reign of Divine Victoria

_Divine Victoria is well known for disbanding the Circles and the previous incarnation of Templar Order. What is less known, however, is how and why she created what we now know as the New Templars, with their garrisons in every major city across Thedas and their lyrium granted to members by choice alone. The name Delrin Barris is hardly a famous one, but serious historians of the Inquisition and the years following its triumph over Corypheus would do well to know it. For it is upon the actions of this second son of a minor Fereldan lord that the entire continued existence of the Order was founded._

_Some of Victoria’s clear dislike for the Templar Order as it existed then was based upon her close working relationship with Cullen Rutherford, Commander of the Inquisition’s armed forces. While she respected him as a military leader and seems to have liked him as a friend, Victoria and Commander Rutherford often disagreed on the role of both mages and Templars in the new world order. Commander Rutherford was a former Templar himself, and in withdrawals from lyrium addiction throughout his time as Commander. Victoria was aware of this, and of his bitterness toward the Order and fear for the wellbeing of other Templars. At this time, Templars were given philters of highly refined lyrium upon graduating from initiate status into full knighthood--and sometimes even given this lyrium by force or manipulation, if full consent was not granted for the process. All lyrium is addictive to those who are not mages, but the Chantry’s philters especially so. And, as the Chantry controlled the flow of all lyrium, no Templar thus addicted could leave the Order without risking severe withdrawals or even death._

_Victoria abolished this practice soon after her election, to the shock of many at the time. In retrospect it may seem ridiculous that this was considered a radical action, but what is actually surprising is that she continued the Templar Order at all._ _We may perhaps cast light upon this choice of hers by examining her actions during the Fifth Blight. Then only twenty-five years old, Victoria was among the companions of the Hero of Fereldan. Among the Hero’s many undertakings was the purification of a profoundly demon-infested Circle Tower, the one that still stands upon the shores of Lake Calenhad, Kinloch Hold. Victoria was among the party who fought their way through the horde of demons there, and her first-hand experience of the havoc that blood mages and demons were capable of wreaking upon the world may have colored Victoria’s later choices._

_Ten years later, Ser Delrin Barris was the sole uncorrupted Templar to escape from Therinfal Redoubt, the stronghold where the Red Templars first began. Victoria watched Ser Barris’s actions from the first, suspicious that he might be a spy. He was not, but it meant that when he began to train the well-known mercenary group, the Bull’s Chargers, in Templar skills, Victoria knew every detail. Victoria and Commander Rutherford later sent Ser Barris and the Chargers upon tasks that would previously have fallen to groups of Templars--tasks in which the impromptu group performed admirably. This demonstrated not only that Templar skills could be effective even without the use of lyrium, but that soldiers trained in those skills could be detached from Circle Towers and used as a mobile force to be sent where needed._

_Divine Victoria’s letters after her election make it clear that Ser Barris and the Chargers served as the model upon which the New Templars were founded. It is unclear what involvement Ser Barris had with the freshly-formed New Templars, as some accounts say he was elected Knight-Commander of the Order, while others say that he was the lover of the leader of the Bull’s Chargers and traveled with them on unrelated tasks. But we know from title-holdings and inheritance records at the time that Victoria held Ser Barris in no small regard, as she granted him land and titles of his own in eastern Orlais._

_He retired there from active duty later in life. Several of the Chargers are even buried there beside him, including a mage named Noam Willit who inherited the estate from Ser Barris, and a Tal-Vashoth named Iron Bull._


End file.
